Eagles back to kelly green for 50th anniversary game

The Eagles will honor their 1960 NFL championship team in Week 1 on Sept. 12, just as the latest lineup begins its drive to end the title drought that has persisted since then.

As part of the 50th anniversary celebration, the team will wear their old kelly green and white uniforms, matching the ones worn by Chuck Bednarik, Tommy McDonald, Pete Retzlaff, and others when the Eagles last won a championship.

The title team will be honored as part of the event and, of course, plenty of 50th anniversary merchandise will be for sale.

The ceremonies will coincide with the Eagles' date against the Packers, a rematch of the 1960 title game.

"You're very aware of the history and the heritage of a franchise like this," Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said in a news conference at Penn's Franklin Field, where the team won the 1960 title game.

Players from that squad, wearing kelly green blazers, said they were honored by the presentation.

"That just goes to show me that the Eagle owners don't forget the ballplayers of the past," said McDonald, 75, an all-pro receiver on the championship squad.

McDonald, who walked into the news conference with DeSean Jackson, danced down the aisle in an impersonation of Jackson's flamboyant end-zone celebrations.

"Seeing him dance like that, I thought about myself a little bit. I almost wanted to dance behind him," Jackson said.

Retzlaff, 78, wearing a championship ring featuring four emeralds and one diamond, has seen many changes since 1960. He made $5,700 a year when he played and spoke to reporters while standing in a Franklin Field end zone, now made of rubber infill. The fans, though, still seem familiar, he said.

"They're pretty much just as rabid as they were when we played 50 years ago, and they're very demanding," Retzlaff said. "Even when they don't know what they're talking about . . . they're very loyal."

Bednarik, 85, said he still gets fan mail. "They haven't forgotten. Thank God. Thank God."

The Eagles ditched their kelly green uniforms in 1996, two years after Lurie bought the team. For their 75th anniversary in 2007, they wore blue and yellow jerseys from the team's earliest days.

"I went with the blue and the yellow because I already knew this was going to be kelly green," Lurie said. "I never said it then, because I wanted all the attention to be on that [75th] anniversary. But in planning that, I said 'I want the first kelly green to be the 50th anniversary [of the championship game].' "

He dismissed a reporter's suggestion that the ceremonies might put more pressure on the team to finally add another championship.

"It's all self-inflicted. We think about it every day," Lurie said.