Soul celebrate title with parade

At first, the crowds on Market Street for Philly's big show yesterday afternoon were scarce, but soon enough office workers, tourists, and folks waiting for the bus began to crowd around.

Was this a parade? For a championship sports team? In Philadelphia?

It was.

And so as the Philadelphia Soul, the newly crowned champs of the Arena Football League, paraded from Independence Hall to City Hall, several thousand wound up gathering to hoist their cell-phone cameras in the air and cheer.

"We've been starved!" yelled Clyde Hawthorne II, 53, who wore an Eagles cap and waved a 76ers towel at the culminating City Hall rally. "We needed this for inspiration. Tell our major sports teams to get a hint."

This wasn't one of the four big sports team forming the traditional - if seldom seen - Broad Street parade. In fact, only half of Market Street was closed for less than a half-hour as the Soul players and their cheerleaders, the Soul Mates, waved from the back of Harley-Davidsons and honking flatbed trucks.

But for some in this sports-loving city, which hasn't seen a major championship since the 76ers won the NBA title a quarter-century ago, the Soul's 59-56 victory Sunday over the defending champions, the San Jose SaberCats, in ArenaBowl XXII in New Orleans was good enough.

"I'll take what I can get," said James Holland, 33, of Northeast Philadelphia. "A parade is a parade."

Buzz Carobus, an assistant district attorney who stepped away from his office to catch the parade, wore a huge smile.

"It's good to have a team win one," Carobus said, who acknowledged he wasn't enough of a fan to know that ArenaBowl XXII was going to be televised live. "I've managed to see all four sports teams lose."

Sometimes, Philly just needs a reason to cheer.

Heck, four years ago when Smarty Jones was making a bid for racing's Triple Crown, there was talk of giving him a parade if he were to win the Belmont Stakes. He did not, and the city did not suffer the indignity of having a horse paraded along Broad Street.

Yesterday, vendors hawked Soul T-shirts, the Soul marching band played on a double-decker tour bus, and team co-owner Jon Bon Jovi addressed the crowd from a stage north of City Hall.

"Six years ago, all we had was a vision when we were awarded a franchise," Bon Jovi said. "We didn't have a pair of shoulder pads, we didn't have an office, we didn't have a football team. . . . I'd be lying if I said five years ago I envisioned thousands of people on Market Street, and helicopters flying overhead."

The crowd responded: "Thank you, Soul! Thank you, Soul!"

Opinions split along generational lines about this championship.

"I don't count this as the major one," said Chris Mooney, 43, of Blackwood.

But Brian Pratz, 24, who wore a Soul T-shirt that read "Jinx? What jinx?," said, "In my eyes, the drought's over."

Three other second-tier sports teams have won championships - the minor-league Phantoms hockey squad, the indoor-soccer Kixx, and the lacrosse Wings - but none got the coveted parade.

In the mid-1990s, some Wings settled for walking their trophy down Market Street to dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe after getting a mayoral proclamation at City Hall, according to former team publicist Ike Richmond.

But this time there were crowds. And if Mayor Nutter is to be believed, this time it matters.

A Nutter spokesman read a mayoral proclamation to the crowd that read, in part: "The drought for Philadelphia is finally over."