When I talk to people about teams that I like and teams that I don't I always bring up how I loathe all Philadelphia sports teams. Many people will ask "why do you hate Philly so much?" and I give them some examples but the main and only reason why I, and many other people, dislike the Eagles and every other team in the "City of Brotherly Love" is because of one reason: Their fans suck.
If you look at global lists of most violent fans or most loathed fans in the world, Philadelphia and especially the Eagles, are the only American team that is on that list and there is a good reason for this. They are unruly, resort to violence regularly, and often behave like pissed off teenagers any time there is an outing involving their team or teams. I personally am connected to this when a friend of mine was hospitalized by Eagles fans at an Panthers game when Philly was visiting. The festivities in the parking lot - which is called tailgating - was going like it normally does with people grilling, drinking, and having a good time when out of nowhere full beer bottles and cans started to rain down on their group. Many people were hit including children as the unruly Philly fans started indiscriminately trying to injure just anyone that wasn't part of their team. My friend took a full bottle hit to the head by chance and ended up having to get reconstructive surgery because of it. The fans were arrested but then did very little time and even seemed proud to have hurt other people that they do not know and have never even spoken to this badly.
This, combined with a multitude of other such events is the reason why I hate Philadelphia fans and their teams so much and always will. Visiting fans are afraid to go to Philly for games because of this and even though they have stepped up security in Philly for any games and especially to protect visiting fans, how do you keep 70,000 people in line? You can't is the short answer and therefore most people simply opt to not go to games in Philadelphia.
I'm not even going to talk in great detail about the Super Bowl. If you like the sport you already know that this was a joke of a Super Bowl and it wasn't even competitive. It was trash and I am not just saying that as sour grapes either. After the first few possessions there was no doubt at all who was going to win this thing and honestly, I think the Eagles could have won this one by a lot more than they did but when a team pulls their starting QB in the later stages of the game they are very sure they are going to win. It could have been 60-0 or so.
Anyway, after the game I braced myself for what I figured was inevitable and that was that the fans in Philly were going to run amok and wreck stuff. Why? Because that is what Philly fans do.
Sure enough. That is exactly what happened.
Within moments of the final whistle tens of thousands of Eagles fans took to the streets of downtown Philly and as usual, it started out with everyone genuinely celebrating en masse, but after a little while it ended up turning violent.
People began climbing on monuments, jumping up and down on parked cars, standing on top of bus stops, scaling parked dump trucks and eventually resorted to attacking police who were there in great numbers in preparation for this. Police were then assaulted and goaded by the crowd but the police held back and didn't disperse the crowd with riot measures. Oh, and a bunch of stores were broken into an looted.
Soon traffic lights were being scaled and torn down by fans and the city is aware that this is a bit of a tradition. In years past during large Philly sporting events the city would grease the traffic light poles but decided to not do that this year. I can only presume that this is a safety issue or perhaps because putting the grease on the poles, and especially removing the grease afterwards is probably a tricky and more-expensive-than-the-poles-themselves sort of endeavor.
Cars were later burned and the mob tried to flip over a police car as well. Many arrests were made but not enough because this has played out so many times in the past that there aren't enough police officers available to keep a crowd like this under control.
The thing that always enters my mind is one of "you won? Why are you destroying stuff?" but there is no logic in the Philly fan's mind. They wreck stuff because they like to wreck stuff, win or lose.
The people that were arrested mostly ended up in that situation for assaulting police officers.
There is a victory parade planned for the champs later on this week and I can all but guarantee that this same scene of senseless violence and destruction will happen again on that day as well.
I congratulate the Philadelphia Eagles for quite possibly the most dominant Super Bowl performance I have ever seen. The Philly fans on the other hand can kiss my ass though, you guys are freakin animals.