Sielski: Jeffrey Lurie and Eagles embrace the selling of Carson Wentz

For Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie, the most delightful development over the last few days wasn't necessarily that his team's ostensible starting quarterback decided to show up to work. Yes, it's nice that Sam Bradford said Monday that he'll report to minicamp next week, but some more promising news for Lurie could have come Wednesday with a click on NFLShop.com.

There, he would have found Carson Wentz's black No. 11 Eagles jersey among the site's top-selling pieces of men's apparel, for a cool $99.99. Those sales, of course, are a reflection of the public excitement over the Eagles' trading up to draft Wentz with the No. 2 overall pick last month, but they also help to explain why the Eagles made the jump in the first place.

Given the direction that the Eagles initially seemed to be taking this offseason, the two trades and the cost they exacted - two starting players, three net draft picks, Bradford's hope that he might finish his career here - didn't make much sense in pure football terms. After firing Chip Kelly, Lurie said he believed the Eagles, as built at the time, were capable of reaching the playoffs. Once they and Bradford reached a two-year contract agreement in early March, the Eagles held an upbeat news conference, the themes of which were that Bradford was relieved to re-sign and hadn't wanted to test free agency anyway and that the Eagles might negotiate a longer-term deal with him after the season. Most telling, the maneuvering and asset sacrifice required to get Wentz would be the antithesis of everything Howie Roseman had said and done over his career as an NFL player-personnel executive.

By late March, though, after the Eagles had worked out and had dinner with Wentz, they had set their sights on him, and the abrupt change in approach has always smacked of an owner's involvement, of Lurie's saying, Do whatever you have to do to get this kid. Lurie was unavailable Wednesday for a comment, but his glee over Wentz's arrival has shone through in team-issued photos and videos that feature the two of them, and one needs only to understand the NFL's marketing history to recognize that Lurie's coveting a franchise quarterback might be about more than a shot at a Super Bowl.

"Everyone knows what the social role of sports is today," author Louis Menand wrote in the May 16 issue of the New Yorker. "It is, via commercials and endorsements, to sell stuff."

In reviewing the new book Players: The Story of Sports and Money and the Visionaries Who Fought to Create a Revolution by Matthew Futterman, Menand pointed out that legendary Hollywood agent and movie mogul Lew Wasserman had provided "the model for contemporary sports marketing. . . . What Wasserman and the studios figured out was that stars sell a picture. If you promote the actors, rather than the story, you will sell more tickets." The NFL began following that model in the late 1970s, when scoring and ticket sales were lagging, to transform itself, changing its rules to make passing a bigger part of the sport, elevating quarterbacks into its primary celebrities.

"For the last 30 years, the image of the NFL has been a series of quarterbacks," Futterman said in a phone interview. "That was a calculated decision."

The Eagles have been up front about their desire to replicate the success they had after selecting Donovan McNabb in the 1999 draft, but that era wasn't defined solely by the team's five NFC East titles and eight playoff berths during McNabb's tenure. Early in his career, McNabb wasn't merely a Philadelphia superstar. He was a national one, thrilling people with his ability to run and throw, and presenting a wholesome image by appearing in those cheeky Campbell's Soup commercials with his mother, Wilma. Those days are oft-forgotten now, because McNabb never did fully validate that stardom with a Super Bowl victory. If he had, he would have owned the city. More, he might have owned the country.

Lurie, himself a former movie and TV producer, can appreciate the power of having a compelling and appealing character as the centerpiece of his franchise. Sure, the Eagles will sell apparel and sell out home games no matter who their quarterback is, and there's a long list of NFL owners and executives who can attest to the wisdom of constructing a team around a strong defense and a stout offensive line. But an athlete who penetrates the popular culture, who draws in casual sports fans, lifts his franchise atop that pedestal with him. He makes his team at all times part of the water cooler conversation, of the latest trend sweeping social media, and even for a billionaire such as Lurie, there's no price too high for that significance.

Remember: The New England Patriots - the NFL organization that Lurie most admires and aspires to emulate - were just another team until Tom Brady went under center in 2001, and as Brady has morphed from underdog to golden boy to supermodel husband to football-deflating villain over the last 15 years, the Patriots have stayed under the brightest of spotlights. Brady is a walking, talking narrative, winning four Super Bowls, creating instant drama and interest, generating that all-important buzz. He embodies an ideal that Lurie has been chasing and hasn't yet acquired.

McNabb was almost that guy. Neither Michael Vick nor Nick Foles was that guy. And Bradford, with his milquetoast persona and star-crossed past, will likely never be that guy. Wentz - good-looking, intelligent, outgoing and affable, talented as hell - might be.

"You can sell two things: wins and hope," Futterman said. "They don't have a ton of wins to sell."

What the Eagles can sell is Carson Wentz, potential superstar. The rest of us are just the audience for the movie in Jeffrey Lurie's head.

msielski@phillynews.com

@MikeSielski