January 15-21, 2004

pretzel logic

The Road to Victory

by Howard Altman

The man in the office next door is smiling the glowing smile of January Monday-morning contentment, an emotion rare in this quadrant of the galaxy.

"You don't understand," says the man next door, still gushing. "You're a transplant. The Eagles don't win big games."

Oy.

That again.

When will people in this town learn about the power of positive persuasion?

Yes, the man next door is right.

I don't understand Philadelphia's self-defeating loser mentality.

I was born in New York, which has the will-do attitude that is the trademark of the nation's largest burg.

It is also home, not so coincidentally, of the ultimate sports dynasty, the hated New York Yankees, and the ultimate sports overachievers, my beloved New York Mets (see Believe, Ya Gotta, circa 1973).

I also lived in Boston, where the natives call the place The Hub, as in the hub of the universe from which all spokes of life radiate. This is a town that dumped out tea and convinced a nation to invest tens of billions to dig up its highway system.

Also not coincidentally, Boston has had its fair share of sports victories.

I lived there during the incredible championship run of Larry Bird's Celtics, when winning was the city's manifest destiny, even when it came to the Red Stockings who, every spring, induce in the populace a mass amnesia that has fans expecting ultimate victory even though, deep down, they know better, thanks to the very real curse of the Babe.

Since 1991, I have lived in Philadelphia, where I have found that people are more apt to remember Osage Avenue than the 1980 world championship strut down Broad Street.

Philly started off on the right foot, giving birth to a nation, but it's been pretty much downhill, morale-wise, ever since.

Maybe last Sunday ended all that.

Maybe Donovan McNabb, a man whose first-round selection was booed by Eagles fanatics attending the NFL Draft, can carry this city like he carried his team, out of defeatism and wholesale acceptance of the mundane and mediocre.

It is more than just locker-room hype and hackneyed cliche to link success in sports to success in life.

There is no endeavor in life -- be it familial, professional or even purely personal -- in which success can be achieved unless success is first believed. Nothing illustrates this principal as much as McNabb's one-for-the-ages performance Sunday against the stunned Green Bay Packers.

And therein might lie the solution to Philadelphia Loser Syndrome.

I urge all Philadelphia-area schools -- public, private, parochial, home, whatever -- to make viewing highlights of the Eagles' 20-17 overtime win as mandatory as the ABCs.

Because sometime in life, every child will face the real-world equivalent of having to dodge, duck and weave past charging defensive backs intent on bodily mayhem. And every child will face the real-life version of fourth and 26.

Not every child will succeed at sports, but McNabb's performance shows what you can do in any aspect of life when you fight hard for your goals and don't quit. That's a lesson as valuable as any other, and who better than McNabb to deliver it?

I asked the Eagles if they were interested in putting something together, but they don't own the rights to the footage, so they passed me off to NFL Films, the Mt. Laurel, N.J., company that shoots every NFL game and helped make the deep voice of John Facenda ring in the heads of a generation of NFL wannabes during every pickup football game ever played.

Cory Laslocky, NFL Films communications manager, says that the company already compiles a highlight reel for each game.

"Kids could take a look at the highlights as an inspirational video," says Laslocky. "All the key plays will be in that highlight."

While the highlights are already available on the NFL Films Network, HBO's Inside the NFL, www.nfl.com "and many other places," Laslocky says NFL Films could make the highlight reel of Sunday's game available to schools.

"The schools should contact us," says Laslocky. "There's no general policy, but we could make it available on a case-by-case basis."

So there you have it, boys and girls, teachers, principals and coaches. If you want an affordable, innovative way to inspire children, contact Laslocky and take him up on the offer.

If it can cure even one kid of Philadelphia Loser Syndrome, then the city will have a brighter future.

Too bad it's too late for the man in the office next door.