Fog Bowl

A group of guys from South Philly gather every Sunday morning to play football for three hours - rain, snow, or extremely low cloud cover, who can tell lately? The quarterback fades back to pass, dark shirts and light alike are almost lost in the mist near the Swedish Museum on Pattison Avenue.

The Eagles' 20-12 playoff loss to the Bears on New Year's Eve featured a fistful of Pro Bowl performers on both sides and opposing coaches with faces more recognizable than most vice presidents'. But the most memorable performance at Soldier Field was turned in by a Lake Michigan fog bank. Like Brigadoon melting away into the Scottish mist, the Eagles-Bears playoff contest disappeared under a soft gray shroud that made it, in one pundit's words, "the best game anyone never saw. " And to varying degrees, that included the participants.

It was editor and essayist John Trotwood Moore who coined the much-quoted aphorism,"Only the game fish swims upstream. " Moore would have admired WIP sportscaster Bill Campbell for taking to the air yesterday in defense of referee Jim Tunney and the other errant zebras who worked the Eagles' NFC playoff loss to the Bears in the fogbanks of Chicago's Soldier Field. From what I caught of the call-in show, Campbell would have been better off heeding the modifying clause of poet and humorist Ogden Nash, who said: "Only the game fish swims upstream.

Eagles career: His time here ran parallel to coach Buddy Ryan, from 1986 through '90. Statistically, his impact was greatest in 1986, when he was third on the team with 112 tackles, and in '87, when he was second to Andre Waters in tackles with 100. But he's best remembered for his jarring tackles that often laid out receivers on the Vet carpet. Eagles memory: "It was a great experience for me," he said. "I got an opportunity to play in one of the most dominant, complicated defenses that I've ever played in. It was a good fit for me. I liked the style of defense that Buddy ran. " His children were born here, he added, and he fondly recalls his time living in the Villanova area.

The Eagles and Bears did not know they were about to be enveloped by history. How could they? All they knew was that they were playing a football game as emotional, frantic and taut as they could ever imagine. Playoff football. Then, slowly, endlessly, the fog poured in, a great tidal wave of thick, creeping mist. And transformed a meaningful game into something legendary. Minutes before halftime, with the Bears ahead, 17-9, the fog crept on millions of little cat feet off the shores of Lake Michigan and over Soldier Field's south end zone, settling comfortably on the field and reducing the field of vision to, at most, 30 yards.

Eagles career: His nine seasons here began with the run to the Super Bowl and ended in the Fog Bowl. Indeed, he was often a phantom, as writer Ray Didinger summarized the day after Young was cut. "He passed through here like a train with its window shades drawn and its lights down low. " Young admitted as much on the phone. "I'm talking more now than when I was there," he said, laughing at the idea that anyone would call him today. "I'm Joe Public now and loving every second of it. " The franchise's top pick in 1980 out of Alcorn State started 109 games at cornerback and finished with 23 regular-season interceptions.

So,how do you think a game would end if one team had Ron Jaworski at quarterback, Wilbert Montgomery at running back and Dick Vermeil on the sideline and the other had Rodney Peete at QB, Ricky Watters at RB and Ray Rhodes calling the shots. If you favored the first group, you would be right. In Game 1 of the "Best of the Nest," aired last night on WIP (610-AM), the 1980 Eagles beat the 1995 Eagles, 21-7, at Veterans Stadium. "Best of the Nest" is a fantasy tournament of the six best teams in Eagles history.

No blanket of fog found its way onto Soldier Field this time. No referee's piercing vision left the Eagles lost in the clouds. They did not walk off the field boiling with the belief that they had played a better game than their conquerors, or that they had proven they could not be stopped. No, last night, these bubbly, bouncy, cocky Eagles just quietly walked off the field, kept to themselves and tried to forget their 27-13 manhandling by the Chicago Bears, the team that drowned their playoff dreams last season in the infamous Fog Bowl.

GO BEARS! That's the slogan I know. I grew up with the Super Bowl Shuffle. We're not here to start no trouble; we're just here to do the Super Bowl Shuffle. (I know the whole thing, but I'm too ashamed to admit it in public.) Mike Singletary. Walter "Sweetness" Payton. Jim McMahon. The Fridge. These are my childhood sports heroes. So when I moved to Philadelphia in February, to be perfectly honest, I had little interest in the Eagles. All I really knew was that my Bears beat the Eagles in the Fog Bowl and that the present incarnation of the Birds had just lost a heartbreaker to the Bucs.

I've been a diehard sports fan for most of my life. And I never thought I would say this. But in the big scheme of life, sports and the Eagles are a frivolous and trivial thing. I still like to watch sports, but my emotional investment in the game isn't near what it used to be. For most of my life, I lived and died with my favorite sports teams. I've gone into funks of near-depression for months after crushing losses such as Temple's loss to Duke in the 1988 NCAA East Regional Final, the Phillies' Black Friday loss to the Dodgers in the 1977 National League Playoffs and Joe Carter's home run in the 1993 World Series, or the Sixers' loss to Portland in the 1977 NBA Finals, or the Eagles' loss to the Bears in the 1988 Fog Bowl.

EVERY TIME Jets coach Rex Ryan opens his mouth, it is hard not to listen for the sounds of the old man - and anybody who lived through those times with the Eagles probably does the same thing. They are different, Rex and Buddy are. Rex is very much a 21st-century Ryan and significantly more polished than his father. Rex never hits his boss with his buckshot, a skill that his father never cared to master. Rex, when talking about people in the football business, also manages to toe a line of decorum, you should excuse the expression, while Buddy would never acknowledge that a line even existed.

Of his first nine passes yesterday, Donovan McNabb completed two of them, and the Eagles' offense had a grand total of 34 yards on their first 15 plays against the Seattle Seahawks. They were in a grim routine - three-and-out, three-and-out, three-and-out - and someone had to step up and bring them out of their malaise. Who could have imagined it would be a guy built like a John Deere tractor, but who probably couldn't outrace one? A guy who was in the starting lineup because the player ahead of him, L.J. Smith, had to stay home because of a concussion?

Eagles career: His time here ran parallel to coach Buddy Ryan, from 1986 through '90. Statistically, his impact was greatest in 1986, when he was third on the team with 112 tackles, and in '87, when he was second to Andre Waters in tackles with 100. But he's best remembered for his jarring tackles that often laid out receivers on the Vet carpet. Eagles memory: "It was a great experience for me," he said. "I got an opportunity to play in one of the most dominant, complicated defenses that I've ever played in. It was a good fit for me. I liked the style of defense that Buddy ran. " His children were born here, he added, and he fondly recalls his time living in the Villanova area.

Eagles career: His nine seasons here began with the run to the Super Bowl and ended in the Fog Bowl. Indeed, he was often a phantom, as writer Ray Didinger summarized the day after Young was cut. "He passed through here like a train with its window shades drawn and its lights down low. " Young admitted as much on the phone. "I'm talking more now than when I was there," he said, laughing at the idea that anyone would call him today. "I'm Joe Public now and loving every second of it. " The franchise's top pick in 1980 out of Alcorn State started 109 games at cornerback and finished with 23 regular-season interceptions.

So,how do you think a game would end if one team had Ron Jaworski at quarterback, Wilbert Montgomery at running back and Dick Vermeil on the sideline and the other had Rodney Peete at QB, Ricky Watters at RB and Ray Rhodes calling the shots. If you favored the first group, you would be right. In Game 1 of the "Best of the Nest," aired last night on WIP (610-AM), the 1980 Eagles beat the 1995 Eagles, 21-7, at Veterans Stadium. "Best of the Nest" is a fantasy tournament of the six best teams in Eagles history.

GO BEARS! That's the slogan I know. I grew up with the Super Bowl Shuffle. We're not here to start no trouble; we're just here to do the Super Bowl Shuffle. (I know the whole thing, but I'm too ashamed to admit it in public.) Mike Singletary. Walter "Sweetness" Payton. Jim McMahon. The Fridge. These are my childhood sports heroes. So when I moved to Philadelphia in February, to be perfectly honest, I had little interest in the Eagles. All I really knew was that my Bears beat the Eagles in the Fog Bowl and that the present incarnation of the Birds had just lost a heartbreaker to the Bucs.

I've been a diehard sports fan for most of my life. And I never thought I would say this. But in the big scheme of life, sports and the Eagles are a frivolous and trivial thing. I still like to watch sports, but my emotional investment in the game isn't near what it used to be. For most of my life, I lived and died with my favorite sports teams. I've gone into funks of near-depression for months after crushing losses such as Temple's loss to Duke in the 1988 NCAA East Regional Final, the Phillies' Black Friday loss to the Dodgers in the 1977 National League Playoffs and Joe Carter's home run in the 1993 World Series, or the Sixers' loss to Portland in the 1977 NBA Finals, or the Eagles' loss to the Bears in the 1988 Fog Bowl.

For more than 20 dismal years without a Super Bowl, Eagles fans such as Mike Carter faithfully did their part. When the Eagles themselves could not be menacing, Carter would be: Drinking, screaming, throwing punches and tumbling down stairs in the 700 level of Veterans Stadium, he helped earn Philadelphia fans a national reputation for enthusiasm. Imagine his euphoria yesterday, with the Eagles suddenly on top of the world, hammering the Washington Redskins into the NeXturf of Veterans Stadium, 34-21, to clinch their second consecutive NFC East title - even after losing starting quarterback Donovan McNabb (to a broken ankle)

It's theirs for the taking. With a win over Washington today at Veterans Stadium, the Eagles would clinch their second straight NFC East championship. That might not seem like a big deal. There are no rings for winning the division, no parades down Broad Street. The Eagles won the East last year, and all anyone really remembers about the season is that they lost the NFC championship game. So what's the big deal? Check history. The Eagles began playing in the NFC East in 1970, when the division was formed in the wake of the NFL's merger with the old American Football League.

Things turned a little greener yesterday in a town where, as one commentator put it: "Blood rules. The elements rule. . . . Clawed hands and frozen fingers. The Bears, forever and ever, amen. " 10:50 a.m., 18 degrees and sunny. John Goodwin and Rich Carroll, men who once worked at Fairless Steel in Bucks County but now live in Chicago and Savannah, Ga., were strolling Michigan Avenue, proclaiming their allegiance with bright green sweatshirts custom made for an Eagles-Bears matchup in October 1999.