Confusing days for Eagles fans

These are confusing days.

Daphne Goldman owns an old Donovan McNabb Eagles jersey. She does not plan to buy a Michael Vick jersey.

"I'm not a Vick fan," Goldman said the other day just off Pattison Avenue as she waited to enter Citizens Bank Park for a Phillies game.

Her friend Jane Nix, who met Goldman outside the front gate, shook her head. She's also an Eagles fan. "Not a Vick fan," she said.

Tickets to the Eagles-Redskins game on Sunday should come with a complimentary visit to a psychologist's couch. Lincoln Financial Field will be full of Vick fans, marking the complicated return of McNabb wearing a Washington jersey.

The one guarantee: It will be an event.

"I imagine it will be out of control," said Adam Sipe, who saw tickets for sale for $400 on craigslist.com last week.

Many Eagles fans surveyed over the weekend - actually, most - assume that McNabb, the former Eagles quarterback, will be applauded Sunday. Most said they would applaud him, but few said they would root for him.

A sizeable contingent thought that when the Eagles traded McNabb on Easter Sunday, it was time for him to go.

"It was a business decision. That's what it was," Bruce Goldstein said. "It's nothing personal. It's only business."

When the beloved Brian Dawkins returned to the Linc as a Denver Bronco, there was no doubt how Eagles fans felt. Not so with McNabb. There never has been a monolithic here's how we feel about McNabb sentiment from Eagles fans. That relationship was destined to be complicated when McNabb wouldn't forget the boo birds on draft day.

He might be surprised to hear how many Eagles fans applaud his tenure. "He didn't get us a Super Bowl, but how do you put that all on him?" Bob Debski asked. "I'm a McNabb fan."

Still, a sizeable contingent of Eagles fans never took to McNabb and were happy to see him go. Those fans acknowledge caring about one thing on Sunday - an Eagles W. They also hope McNabb doesn't play particularly well. Their complaints about the quarterback? He never came up big in the big games, he never came across as a standup guy after tough losses, and he always sounded too programmed.

"I hate the fact that he's in the NFC East. He became a Redskin. I could care less about him now," said Sipe, who owns Brian Westbrook and Kevin Curtis jerseys and recently bought a Brent Celek jersey for $50 from a Giants fan.

Serious McNabb loyalists also remain and understand McNabb didn't ask out of town. Bernard Smith, who grew up in Yeadon and lives in San Diego, said in an e-mail that he hopes McNabb "has an all-pro day."

Smith, who works for Customs and Border Protection after retiring from the Navy, said he has subscribed to the DirecTV Sunday Ticket package since 1999. He has missed maybe five Eagles games in that time.

"My den has green carpet with an Eagles train, banners, signs, a Donovan figure, two pillows, a handmade knitted blanket in the Eagles colors," Smith said. "I carry an Eagles lunch [box] to work. . . . I have Eagles dice hanging from my mirror in my car and an Eagles sun shade for the windshield."

But letting McNabb go, Smith parts ways. "This goes down with the trade of Moses for Ruland, Barkley to Phoenix, Iverson to Detroit and Wilt to the Lakers. Philly teams seem to always make some of the dumbest deals throughout sports."

A huge aspect of McNabb's return is how it is colored by the performance of his successor. A few weeks ago, the game shaped up as an early referendum on whether the Eagles did the right thing by trading McNabb and anointing Kevin Kolb as his successor.

But if the central feature of that trade was about contracts and looking to the future, coach Andy Reid scuttled that when he elevated Vick to the top spot, putting X-and-O football and winning now ahead of long-term contracts. Still, Reid did this in the most confusing way possible, contradicting himself at every turn, further muddying the waters for fans trying to figure out how they felt about it all.

The Kolb subplot won't be as big on Sunday. Vick and McNabb are the headliners in a production that has no real precedent, with all the tangled history.

Tickets will be playoff-level scarce. One craigslist ad offered two Phillies first-round playoff tickets in the 200 level for two Eagles tickets.

Dave Golberg has his own advertisement on craigslist: "Have season tix myself, but promised the Redskins/Eagles game to someone last year [before the trade]. Now I'm Stuck. I have four seats all together, and they are good seats. I can give you Giants or Houston [both national games]."

Golberg said yesterday that no one had called him. He said he wants "to get in that game pretty badly." If he gets in, Golberg said he won't be cheering for McNabb. "He's a crybaby."

Goldman, one of the non-Vick fans outside Citizens Bank Park who owns a McNabb jersey, was wearing her Jamie Moyer baseball jersey.

"It's a lot easier to be a Phillies fan," she said.