Time for old Eagles dogs to learn some new tricks

The Eagles won the Super Bowl and 700,000 people crammed the Benjamin Franklin Parkway for a party. There, they were famously scolded by Jason Kelce for previously not believing that it could be done. Still, they were there.

The Eagles won the Super Bowl, and they were invited on late-night talk shows. They won the Super Bowl and were saluted in headlines, with newspapers printing special editions and magazines rushing them onto their covers. They won the Super Bowl and books were published about the achievement.

The Eagles won the Super Bowl and they were invited to the White House. They won the Super Bowl and were fitted for rings. They won the Super Bowl and their championship game will be rebroadcast forever on the football networks.

They won the Super Bowl … and yet they still don’t want to take off those dog masks.

“I still don’t know if we’re getting the respect we probably should be getting as the defending Super Bowl champions,” Kelce told the NFL Network last week. “But I think we’re always trying to look for motivation. You’re always trying to find little things to be able to push you forward. I can tell you we’ve been a starving dog for 52 years. One bowl of food isn’t going to suffice the appetite.” Ahhh, stop it. Nobody is disrespecting the Eagles.

No one said they didn’t deserve to win. No one. Yet there was Lane Johnson recently, on a podcast called The Steve Austin Show, still grumpy that the Patriots didn’t show the Birds the proper respect prior to the Super Bowl. So evidently, that’s how it is going to go. Again. The Eagles will complain that they are not at the top of the futurebook odds board. They will complain if someone wonders if they can win another 13 regular-season games against a different schedule. They will whine if they are underdogs in some road game.

Maybe it works for them. It did seem to help in the last postseason. But at some point, it is unseemly. For good reason, few sports teams in history have ever been as roundly lauded. They should show that some respect.

••• Do you get why fox hunters say “tally ho?”

••• As of the weekend, road teams in the Stanley Cup playoffs were 39-35. As underappreciated sports realities go, that deserves votes for No. 1.

Baseball teams playing at home have plenty of advantages, from the way their lawns can be mowed to the opportunity to hit last. So put that aside. But why is it that winning a basketball game on the road should be so different than winning at home? Or football? College or pro?

In too many sports, teams are half-deflated before their bus arrives at an out-of-town arena. Yet in hockey, it’s different. And it should be different.

Some theories: Hockey essentially is played behind glass. So, unlike in basketball, the fans cannot influence referees, even subliminally. Also, there are fewer whistles in hockey. Thus, the gameto-game discrepancies in power-play opportunities are negligible. Both teams will have their chances.

There is no one explanation for why it happens. But it does. And because it does, the NHL and its officials deserve, for once, not to be booed.

• Alex Lyon made 94 saves in a five-overtime, 2-1 Phantoms victory in the AHL playoffs. Even acknowledging that it was against the Charlotte Checkers, not the Pittsburgh Penguins, it was enough to reopen the question: Would he not have been better for the Flyers in the playoffs than Brian Elliott or Michal Neuvirth? It also opens one more question: If the Flyers are so deep in young defensemen, as their trust-the-process narrative goes, what were they doing giving up 95 shots in a game?

••• To the reader who asked about Maurice Chevalier … if you have to ask, you already know the answer.

••• Through a quarter of a season, it’s time to project the Phillies to finish somewhere in the chase for one of those cut-rate wild-card playoff spots. Technically, then, there should be a loose strain of pennant fever already beginning to spread. It hasn’t. Perhaps because the Eagles won the Super Bowl or because the Sixers have some compelling young stars, the interest in the Phils has seemed suppressed. Continued good play and schools breaking for the summer could change that. But if not, the Phillies should know who to blame: Themselves. That’s because an operation can’t be so satisfied for so long with poor results without sending customers scrambling for other interests. And it may take more than a few good weeks to turn that back around. It might even take a few good years.

••• ATM surcharges … I don’t get it.

••• The Supreme Court has ruled that states other than Nevada may legalize gambling on sporting events. Eventually, that must affect the way sports are covered on TV and in other media.

Once TV networks begin charging more for commercials late in games when the spread is in play, it will be mandatory for the color analysts and those responsible for on-screen graphics to note the difference between, say, a late-game touchdown and a lategame field goal.

And if the sports leagues are to demand some kind of kick-back from states for their contribution to a new revenue source, then they should not be allowed to consider the gambling topic to be out of bounds.

••• Just thinking out loud, but Dick Vermeil probably didn’t pay attention to that royal wedding, either. Contact Jack McCaffery @jmccaffery@21stcenturymedia.com; follow him on Twitter @ JackMcCaffery