Rich Hofmann: Eagles coaching intern's quarterback dream was fun while it lasted

BETHLEHEM - The National Football League doesn't do fairy tales, not very often, not anymore. It is too big, and has been for a long time. The players and the money are enormous now, so formidable and still growing, that the dreamers and the longshots occupy a smaller and smaller place in the landscape.

So many roster spots are spoken for before the first practice, so many players arrive with pedigrees and investments that make them automatics. Because of that, we cherish the exceptions as we chart their extinction.

With that, meet Matt Nagy.

"Life's crazy and it's full of opportunities," Nagy was saying yesterday morning, after he pulled on the No. 9 red jersey and practiced as the Eagles' third-string quarterback. He is 31 years old, out of the University of Delaware and the Arena Football League. He had never gotten a sniff in an NFL training camp. He was with the Eagles for his second summer as a coaching intern, preparing for the rest of his life.

And now he was playing, suddenly, because the Eagles needed a quarterback for a short period of time while backup Kevin Kolb recovered from a knee sprain. And now it was past midnight, Monday going into Tuesday, and the playbook was put away. "I was laying in bed, and I just got done, and just laid down and was thinking, and had a smile on my face that this is happening," Nagy said. "That might be all it is. It may be more. I don't know. But how can you not have a smile on your face with this opportunity?"

Four hours later, the Eagles practiced again. This time, Nagy was back in coaching shorts. The red No. 9 jersey was gone. Nagy was no longer a player, his contract rejected by the NFL, according to a source, because of a pre-existing Arena League contract that hasn't quite expired even though the league itself pretty much has expired.

And there Nagy was, running off the practice field, saying he couldn't comment - a legal technicality, a dream derailed.

The Eagles would not comment. The NFL would not comment. Within an hour, it appeared that the Eagles had turned to former Temple quarterback Adam DiMichele, whom they signed and then released after their spring minicamps were completed. An hour after that, this word came from Paul Sheehy, the president of ProStar Sports Agency, the group that represents Nagy: