There are millions of people who will tell you football is all about family, a gritty legacy that’s been passed down through even the most skeptical generations, but for me, football has always been about hope and possibility. It has to be. I am an Eagles fan, and we were waiting until next year since 1960.
I am also the daughter of that guy who centered the ball so perfectly, season after season. Who carried his small town on his back, and then snapped his successful future over the Quarterback’s head in his high school’s most important game.
It wasn’t just any high school either. It was the under-dog half of one of the oldest rivalries in the nation, Phillipsburg Vs Easton. No matter how many times he taught our family about honesty, hard work, right from wrong…no matter how many times he showed up for us, there would always be something in our DNA, a mysterious genetic flinch, that caused us to quietly beware.
It was an imprinted voice that made us think we would try things, give them our all, and never really measure up. It wasn’t paralyzing, but victim-speak, no less, always expecting that ball to one day sail beyond our grasp.
We would all experience other small victories through time, and my father would hold his head up gracefully at every class reunion, but I am convinced this fear-based albatross was the thing that kept our family unfairly small. I watch football to spit in the face of that menace. I write this story for my dad, my brothers, the town of Phillipsburg, the women I know who think they are less-than, and even the Philadelphia Eagles, to tell them football lets us know anything is possible, victory, valor, and yes, the coveted Super Bowl.
Through loss and adversity grow strength and character.
The gridiron is a metaphor for life, with its interceptions and fumbles. My story will always be about 4th and 26, DeSean Jackson and Brian Westbrook finding a crease, an extra gear, dropping every jaw in the Big Apple with bulldozing tackle-breaks, and cuts like razor-blade ballet. And of course, the emergence of Carson Wentz and Nick Foles, who finally took us over the hill. I cannot allow myself to see those games ending any other way, as much as I could ever be the girl who shouldered a mistake as an acceptable seat to life’s theater of mediocrity.
I watch football to remind me I am one spiral from greatness, that my story could change stories. That on any given day, not just Sunday, hard work, ethics, the lessons of my father could be made right though my action. His life, with these words, could eclipse any scoreboard, any human error.
I watch football to push beyond the comfort zone into the end zone, to see the family Jones, grand and glorious. To create a legacy deserving of sky box seats and VIP treatment for once, the ensuing parade down Broad Street, the memory that transcends time.
I am Invincible, I am the Silver Lining. I am the fall breeze that says I believe, even when winter is right around the corner.
And when time expires, the newspapers will not have to print those photos of outstretched arms with a pigskin hurling over them. Rather they will write the story of a man who got it right, who didn’t let a loss define him…who raised a family of good human beings and taught them, in addition to what really matters in life, you have to dig deep, sometimes beyond generations, but it’s always possible to dazzle and surprise, to know in your bones that the play could go differently. I watch football to rewrite the outcome of a botched snap with words and actions that could publish my path to the stage my dad and our family really belong on, if only for a few glorious hours.
My story is my personal Hail Mary, my high-five with every Eagle who ever electrified our television and inspired me to keep hope in my heart, keep the writer inside me creating. It’s the front page of the Inquirer. It’s my game-winning drive that ends victorious, with Merrill Reese shouting the Jones name for the ages.
