Danny White said:
I think I found it on the Philadelphia Inq website. Send me the $99 for a subscription to their archives and I'll post it here.
I do think it's on there, but I'm not going to shell out the coin for it.
Was this the article?
'Our time' for Super Bowl: Dream dies bitterly for fans
Source: Matthew P. Blanchard, Kristen A. Graham and Patrick Kerkstra INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS
The city's soaring Super Bowl dreams hit the glass ceiling again last night, knocking Eagles fans back into the basement of bitter memories where they have lived for 23 years.All week, fans had chanted the mantra that the third time would be the charm. But it wasn't. Having battled their way into the National Football Conference championship game as they had last season and the season before, the Eagles, playing before an enthusiastic, prayerful home-field crowd, again came up
http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_action=list&p_topdoc=61
Yes!! THANKS!!...
Here is the rest of the article....
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/7744380.htm?1c
Posted on Mon, Jan. 19, 2004
'Our time' for Super Bowl: Dream dies bitterly for fans
By Matthew P. Blanchard, Kristen A. Graham and Patrick Kerkstra
Inquirer Staff Writers
The city's soaring Super Bowl dreams hit the glass ceiling again last night, knocking Eagles fans back into the basement of bitter memories where they have lived for 23 years.
All week, fans had chanted the mantra that the third time would be the charm. But it wasn't. Having battled their way into the National Football Conference championship game as they had last season and the season before, the Eagles, playing before an enthusiastic, prayerful home-field crowd, again came up short in a 14-3 loss to the Carolina Panthers - one victory away from the Super Bowl.
Like Charlie Brown barreling toward one more yanked-away placekick, Eagles fans fell hard. The Eagles' only Super Bowl appearance came in 1981, when they lost to the Oakland Raiders.
Fans who had filed into Lincoln Financial Field in a party mood left dejected, angry or both.
"There's no words. Each year gets harder," said James Madden, 27, of the city's Tacony section.
Nearby, a friend tried comforting Robert O'Sullivan with a hug, but he shrugged it off. "This was it," the 43-year-old resident of Upper Darby said. "This was our time." (BP says that he thinks Robert stole the "This was our Time" line from the movie Goonies)
Others raged at the stadium.
"Burn it down!" cried Ryan Hughes of Mount Laurel. "Somebody give me a lighter... . Burn it down!"
And in the nearly empty stands, Carlos Martini, 21, of Northeast Philadelphia, sat with his head between his knees, unable to leave. Across the field a knot of Carolina fans whooped and hollered.
"I wonder what that feels like," he said. "I just want to know what it feels like to win like that." (BP says - If you were a cowboys fan...you would know how that feels....(now in snaggle puss voice) - Multiple times even)
Fans started to sweat when Donovan McNabb was sacked and injured in the second quarter. The stadium crowd gasped - then almost desperately cheered when, despite a painful injury to his ribs, McNabb returned to the game after missing one play.
Joe Masters, 18, of Glenolden, said he had massive respect for the star quarterback: "Donovan McNabb, man, he makes the plays happen."
But just before halftime, with Eagles down, 7-3, grumbling began to echo through the stadium.
"I'm not too happy right now, not too happy at all," said Tim Miller, 25, of Northeast Philadelphia, who spouted expletives at the stadium's JumboTron as McNabb threw an interception near the end of the second quarter.
Two interceptions and no Eagles touchdowns later, an ominous noise rose from the stands. "Yeah, they were booing," said security guard Ricardo Tucker, 21. "It's getting ugly in here."
Elsewhere in the city, La Salle University student Christine Purvis nervously bit her lips as Carolina intercepted yet another Eagles pass.
"If they don't win, everyone's going to be flipping out," said Purvis, 20, a junior from the city's Mayfair section surrounded by tense dorm mates.
But hope died hard. Loyal or delusional, many fans clung to belief even after Carolina took a 14-3 lead in the third quarter.
"It is destiny," said Bill Lennox, 21, of Southwest Philadelphia, who was at the stadium. "My dad smashed at least five TV sets watching the Eagles while I was growing up. I had to believe." (BP says the dad must be a tad crazy....or to cheap to buy a bullet proof tv )
Then Lennox spoke the unthinkable, beginning a sentence with: "If the Eagles lose..."
His friend Justin Lang, 21, responded with a backhanded slap.
"What did you say?" snapped Lang, hitting Lennox hard enough to spill his friend's beer.
"Sorry, sorry," Lennox said.
"Don't quit on me now," Lang said.
(BP says - this whole "backhanded slap" and the guy that got slapped saying "Sorry, Sorry"....seems like a bad movie with a pimp and ho...and NO I am not a eagles fan so it was not I)
The emotional investment many fans had made was enormous and evident at the beginning of the game.
"These past three days have been crazy at work. I can't concentrate, can't work on anything," said Holly Bracken, a 32-year-old sales manager from Ocean City, N.J., who was 9 when the Eagles lost Super Bowl XV.
"If I could have taken my blood pressure before the game, it would have been off the charts," Bracken said at the Linc.
But it was a good nervous, she thought at the time, and for a while other fans seemed to agree.
"They're not going to let us down, not this team, not this year, not this time," proclaimed Bill DiMenna, 39, a designer and draftsman from Runnemede.
(BP says around Philly they call this guy....Nostra*******)
Loretta Wonderlin, 67, leaned over the railing and shook a 12-inch troll doll named Touchdown at the field below.
"We're definitely going to win," squealed Wonderlin, an Avon representative from Delran. "That's what he [the doll] told me - 10 points."
The doll, however, just smiled. (BP - The Doll, however, just smiled line just kills me)
Haddonfield United Methodist Church, which usually holds a Christian-themed program for youths on Sunday nights, scrapped traditional worship in favor of another kind: Eagles prayer and adoration.
About 20 teenagers and adults plopped down on six old couches and fixed their attention on a huge projection screen for the game.
"I've been pacing all day," said youth leader Karyn Hackney, 38, of Sicklerville. "Look, I'm not related to them, I don't know any of them, but I want them to win so much."
But wanting couldn't make it so.
As the game ended, it was a funeral inside the American Legion Post 832 in Northeast Philadelphia. Chuck Devlin, a 73-year-old veteran,
pulled the cigar out of his mouth to hum Taps. (BP says a video of this would be priceless)
Nursing a beer nearby, Jim Gallen, 57, shook his head.
"We are the most frustrated fans ever. This hurts."
But the older Devlin had seen worse. He already saw a summer sun on the horizon.
"Just wait till the Phils play. We've got to win sometime."
