Lurie sees his vision vindicated

This article was originally published in the Inquirer on January 24, 2005.

The whole story was up on the platform, confetti falling all around, the roar of 70,000 freed souls frozen in the night air.
 
As Jeffrey Lurie received the George S. Halas Trophy, his wife, Christina, and his old friend, Joe Banner, were standing to his right. Andy Reid, the coach he had plucked from obscurity and handed control of his football team, was to his left. Donovan McNabb, the quarterback he had staked his franchise on, was just behind him.

As he looked out through the blizzard of green and white and silver, Lurie could see the fans almost as well as he could hear them.

"It's always about the fans," the Eagles' owner said minutes after his team finally, finally, finally, finally had gotten over the hump and won the NFC championship. "These fans are the most passionate, most deserving fans you can imagine. I'm just so happy we were able to win this for them. "

Lurie is a wealthy man, and maybe that's why it was difficult for hard-core Eagles fans to warm up to him - as if there were any working-class owners of pro sports franchises.

Or maybe it was the idea that he was an outsider come down from Boston to show Philadelphia how things should be done - as if the predecessors who nearly moved the team (Leonard Tose) or nearly squeezed it dry (Norman Braman) were such local heroes.

But the view from that makeshift platform at midfield was something Lurie had seen all along - a consistent, championship-caliber team playing in a sparkling new stadium.

"Yes, that was the vision," he said. "I thought the challenge here was to make people see the franchise differently, to treat it as a state-of-the-art franchise even before it was one. "

For whatever reason, Lurie couldn't make anyone else see the vision. Well, no one outside his inner circle.

It wasn't that long ago that a new stadium for the Eagles was considered to be as likely as some unknown assistant coach from Green Bay taking the team to the Super Bowl as its head coach.

"I've known Jeff and what he was all about for 30 years," Banner said. "I know how he was perceived here and how he felt about that. I had the chance to talk to him about that over the years. To see him holding that trophy up in front of these fans - I'm just thrilled at whatever role I was able to play in making that happen for him. "

Lurie took the trophy to the southwest corner of the stadium and held it up for the fans to see. He walked along the back of the south end zone, and the fans lining the railing roared at the sight of that elusive hunk of silver and wood.

That was Jeffrey Lurie's public moment.

His private one was much different.

About 45 minutes before kickoff, Lurie made his real contribution to his team's quest.

He danced.

"It was no big deal," he said. "Players and coaches win championships, not owners. "

True enough. But this particular group of players and coaches had been to this point three years in a row. This particular group had blown two golden chances to move on to the Super Bowl. It was as important for these players and coaches to be loose and relaxed as it was for them to know their playbooks.

So Lurie danced. Hugh Douglas and Jeremiah Trotter, the two repatriated defensive players, were behind it. They picked the music. They put Lurie up to it - in the training room, in front of dozens of young, hip pro athletes.

"I think I did OK for a white guy," Lurie said. "I think they were impressed. "

It is fitting that Lurie's Eagles will meet the New England Patriots in Jacksonville, Fla., on Feb. 6. When Lurie decided to try to buy his way into the NFL, he went after the Patriots. Robert Kraft got them instead. Lurie looked around and found, in Braman, an owner ready to cash out for what looked like too much money at the time.

Kraft's Patriots have won two Super Bowls in the last three years. Lurie watched them, wondering what might have been if his team had been able to win that one game.

Now Lurie's Eagles get their chance, just months after his favorite baseball team beat its own historic jinx.

"The Eagles in Philly are so much like the Red Sox are in Boston," Lurie said. "After the Red Sox beat the Yankees and got over that hump, they played one hell of a World Series, completely dominating a team that was just as good as they were, if not better. I expect us, now that we've gotten over this hump, to play relaxed and play our best game of the year in Jacksonville. "

Lurie expects them to win. He always has, and that's the thing Eagles fans maybe didn't quite get about him. That talk about his franchise being the "gold standard" and "winning championships" - plural - before winning anything - that's where it all started.

"We wanted to make good decisions, not necessarily the popular, short-term decision," Lurie said.

Some of those good decisions - Reid, McNabb, even Banner - were with Lurie on the platform at midfield last night.

It was crowded up there.