Jeffrey Lurie

Eagles president Harry T. Gamble, who joined the team as a volunteer coach in 1981, resigned yesterday to become coordinator of football operations and club relations for the NFL in New York. Gamble, who watched somewhat uncomfortably as his role and responsibilities were reduced dramatically under owner Jeffrey Lurie, said he was looking forward to his new duties - even if it meant commuting daily from his South Jersey home to Manhattan for the first time in his life. "This is really the pinnacle," said Gamble, who will be 65 in December.

Owner's box, Veterans Stadium, third exhibition game. The Eagles have just defeated the Cincinnati Bengals. It is the first and - as it turns out - the only victory of the Jeffrey Lurie era, and the new owner is pleased. The final whistle blows. Eagles win! Eagles win! Seated in the first row of the box, Lurie slowly gets to his feet and begins to applaud. Then the guy sitting to his left notices and stands up and begins clapping. Then the guy to his right - who happens to be club president Harry Gamble - notices and stands up and begins clapping.

The Eagles are now 0-3 with no end of losses in sight. Who's to blame? Bobby Hoying? Ray Rhodes? The Bank of Boston? If there is an enduring article of faith in this town, it is that Jeffrey Lurie paid too much for the Birds. Or more on point: borrowed too much from that New England institution, more than $190 million. And now, those who subscribe to this theory will tell you, he is unable or unwilling to spend what it takes to make the team a winner. But is it so?

Jeffrey Lurie loves pro football so much that he is apparently willing to shell out $185 million for the Eagles. But the similarities between Lurie and a stogie-puffing, chest-thumping, headline-craving, old-boys'-network-aspiring professional sports team owner end right there. Lurie, the 42-year-old heir to a publishing fortune, appears to be a real '90s kind of guy. He has a Ph.D. in social policy from Brandeis University. His doctoral dissertation was titled "The Depiction of Women in Hollywood Movies.

Bill Walsh, who built the San Francisco 49ers into a Super Bowl dynasty, is trying to help Jeffrey Lurie do the same thing in Philadelphia by brokering a deal between his old friend Dick Vermeil and the Eagles. And it appears that Walsh's efforts could pay off. Representatives of Lurie, the Eagles' owner, and Vermeil reviewed counterproposals yesterday, and there is evidence of renewed life for a deal that could bring Vermeil to the Eagles as head coach and general manager. But Lurie, sources said, may not be done interviewing other head coaching candidates.

Veterans Stadium was abuzz - and the Eagles' front office puzzled - yesterday over head coach Rich Kotite's latest remarks about his job status. Kotite expanded on comments he'd made on Tuesday in The Inquirer, acknowledging that new team owner Jeffrey Lurie had made him "a lame duck" coach and that he, too, would evaluate his situation after the season. "I get along extremely well with (Lurie)," Kotite said yesterday after the team's first practice for Cleveland, which will be at Veterans Stadium on Sunday.

Miami car dealer Norman Braman - who kept pro football in Philadelphia and built a foundering franchise into a perennial contender, but whose tough negotiating tactics soured his relationship with many players and fans and led to free-agency defections - agreed yesterday to sell the Eagles to Hollywood producer Jeffrey Lurie for a record $185 million. The sale, which must be approved by three-fourths of the NFL's 28 owners, should be completed in four weeks, ending Braman's nine turbulent years as owner of one of the most profitable and enduring franchises in all of pro sports.

The wives stream by, bejeweled and Botoxed, in a high-priced parade of designer labels and expensive perfume. They are laughing, mostly, and why not? They are immaculately dressed down to their open-toed wedge sandals, not an eyelash out of place, not a fingernail chipped, and almost all are carrying boutique bags filled with Gucci and Chanel and Hermes. It is a charmed life, that of an NFL owner's wife. The pedestrian worries of common folks - such as how to pay the soaring electric bill or what to do once the severance payments run out - aren't of their concern.

LeSean McCoy deleted the Twitter account he used to attack the mother of his child over the weekend. That was considerate of him. Unfortunately, he can't come around and scrub all of our memories, one by one. So we can't pretend we don't know way too much about McCoy, his character, and his personal life. You may feel that this whole thing is nobody's business and so shouldn't be the subject of a column. I would counter that it's the subject of a column only because McCoy inflicted his ugly personal business on the rest of us. When a college football player was very nice to a woman who didn't exist, it became the biggest story in the country.

Over the last dozen years, Philadelphia has lost so many billionaires - 10 names in all - it no longer has sole bragging rights in Pennsylvania. Judging from Forbes' latest list of the world's wealthiest people, the Pittsburgh and Philly areas are now tied with three residents apiece with 10-figure fortunes. If not for newcomer Michael Rubin , e-commerce whiz and 76ers part-owner, Pittsburgh would have been first - just as it is in Super Bowls (six to zip). Although more than a dozen billionaires either grew up in the Philadelphia area (like newly listed Valley Forge-born designer Tory Burch , investor/philanthropist Ronald Perelman , apparel-and-entertainment tycoon/philanthropist Sidney Kimmel , and ex-Eagles owner Norman Braman )