A Father's Secret Love Affair with the Eagles

All of the author's life was spent rooting for the Giants and Uncle Phil Simms, but was David Fronefield secretly an Eagles fan?

The Eagles-Giants rivalry holds special memories for this fan.

Here is a personal story from freelance writer Luke Fronefield:

Over the years I’ve mostly ignored my father’s affinity for the Philadelphia Eagles, but perhaps an intervention is overdue. 

After all, we are talking about a man who is not only the brother-in-law of Phil Simms but a loyal friend and fan of the former Giants QB. 

An Eagles fan? 

How could this happen?

Throughout the early 1980s, my father, David Fronefield, would line up at a local high school field to catch passes from Uncle Phil. Hang around any quarterbacking family long enough and you learn that warm bodies with hands satisfy the basic prerequisites for helping a QB whenever he gets the urge to practice his craft. 

I think of my 1960’s hippie-turned-lawyer father running routes for a Super Bowl MVP quarterback and it makes me chuckle.

I also think of my father inside the ambulance patting his sister and Phil's wife, Diana’s back, urging her not to look down at the thumb-bone sticking out from Phil’s hand, reassuring her - and Phil - that he would be just fine, that he had looked phenomenal in orchestrating a comeback despite the dire circumstances: Phil’s fourth season-ending injury in four straight seasons. 

Which team did this to Uncle Phil? 

You guessed it - the Philadelphia Eagles.

To say my father’s affinity for the Eagles is odd would be an understatement, but that would be ascribing reason and logic to a man who traveled 3,000 miles from New Jersey to study at bohemian Reed College where he drank beers with early Apple computer Brahmans. 

This is a man who proclaims to this day that the Beatles were overrated, that the Rolling Stones were in fact the real deal.

With hindsight, the timing of that ambulance ride is important. 

It was before Reggie, before Clyde, before Jerome, before Randall, and, yes, before a certain coach and brand of football arrived in Philadelphia.

To understand this story, you have to understand the mid-1980s marked a time when the NFC East was becoming one of the most dominant divisions in NFL history. 

And yet, even with the Giants and then-Redskins winning Super Bowl titles, the mid-80s Eagles stood out. 

Before Michael Vick, before Lamar Jackson, and yes, before Jalen Hurts, there was Randall. Absolutely electric. Nobody had ever played QB that way before. And no other defense outside of the ’85 Bears had ever played as collectively nasty as that Eagles D. 

No wonder the players and coach became bigger than themselves: “Buddy Ball” proved deadly to opponents and irresistible to fans outside of the typical Philadelphia orbit.

To this day, my father howls out the names “Jerome Brown!” and “Reggie White!” as he hugs and tickles his grandkids, the same as he did to my brother and me. And yes, on occasion he’ll even blurt these names at Uncle Phil in some paroxysm of affectionate taunting or whatever it is that he’s doing. 

Phil is very good at ignoring him. I suppose decades of dealing with the New York sports media and fans prepare a guy for situations like these? It’s the only explanation.

But then, not so long ago, we came close to something resembling a breakthrough.

Gathered in the living room, we shook our heads in collective glum as Cody Parker’s potential game-winning field goal ‘double doinked’ off the uprights, sealing victory for the Eagles and misery for the Bears. 

When Phil turned and observed my dad beaming with delight, well, I guess it was all finally just too much for him. 

"The Eagles, huh?" he said to my Dad. "You’re rooting for THEM?"

He said it with some fire in his eyes.

"Tell me again why you root for THEM?"

The truth is that I had occasionally indulged my father over the years, talking Eagles with him on Sundays, and even once joining in his crusade (Eagles v. Patriots Super Bowl), but never in front of other Giants fans, and certainly never in front of Uncle Phil.

On the day of that double doink, though, it felt like the elephant in the room might finally be addressed.

Confronted by his QB brother-in-law, a man Howie Long once described as a linebacker playing the position of quarterback, my father appeared, well, a smidge intimidated.

I watched as he took a breath, smirked a little, and replied to Phil's question ‘Why THEM?’ with a name familiar to any Eagles fan: Buddy Ryan.

“Buddy Ryan?” Phil scoffed. "BUDDY FREAKIN RYAN!?” he repeated as if to say ‘What in the WORLD do THESE EAGLES have to do with BUDDY FREAKIN RYAN?’ And also perhaps to say: ‘You really are a pain-in-the-ass brother-in-law.’

Looking ahead to Saturday night, we’ll gather at Uncle Phil’s for the monumental playoff matchup between the Giants and Eagles, and I can’t help but think that this is the year we’ll finally get around to that intervention. 

'Go, Giants!'

Or is it, 'Go Eagles?!'

Luke Fronefield is a writer whose short film El Mar y El appeared on HBO. Born and raised in New Jersey, Luke lives in Miami with his Giants-loving wife Margaret and Mets-loving children Giovanna, Luciano and Giuseppe. A graduate of Dickinson College (Carlisle, PA), Luke has officially adopted the University of Miami as his D1 foster college for rooting purposes. He can be reached at LukeFronefield@yahoo.com