OK, here's the good news, and it's two-fold:

You're about to find out where you are on the list - and you face a lot less competition.

The list has about 20,000 fewer names than it had on Independence Day.

Within days, emails should go out, telling fans their magic number, according to marketing director Mike Malo.

"We're wrapping up the process of assigning numbers and are shooting for Friday of this week to begin sending correspondences, which will take a couple of days to hit members' email addresses," he said this morning.

Fans have been signing up since Lincoln Financial Field opened in 2003, forming a virtual line for general season tickets, which are upper level seats that have no seat licenses.

Since then, however, fans have had no way of knowing where they were on the list.

Early last month, the Eagles set out to change that.

They contacted fans by email and snail mail, telling them to confirm or update their contact information by Aug. 8 or their names would get dropped.

Efforts were made to reach them all, but about 20,000 seem to have declined, forgotten or simply couldn't be reached, because their email and home addresses had changed.

Of course, that's bad news for anyone disappointed at being deleted. They'll have to sign up all over again.

"It's not really fair to put them back on the list," Malo said. "They'll have to get to the back of the line."

Alas, there's bad news even for those who survived - and it's also twofold.

Some 41,311 names remain.

Wait, it gets worse.

About 41,300 of them will be too high to be offered a pair of season tickets this year.

Further, just because you signed up in 2003, the year the Linc opened, isn't cause enough to get excited.

So did about 10,000 other fans, Malo said.

The Linc has about 22,000 general season tickets, but almost nobody gives them up, he said. Even though the seats can't be sold for reassignment - except to a member of one's immediate family.

(The season tickets with seat licenses, which are closer to the field, can be resold by their owners - until the Linc's lease expires around 2033, Malo said.)

So unless your waiting list number is low enough to count in one breath, you're not likely to get season tickets in the Linc's lifetime, or yours.

Then again, look at the bright side: Think of all the money you're saving.

There is another benefit, Malo said. The team plans to use the updated email list to send special offers to fans, such as prizes or a chance to buy game tickets turned back in by the league or visiting teams.

"I think this process was good for people who really wanted to be on the waiting list," he said.