If one player on that day symbolized the passage soon to take place, it was Chuck Bednarik of the Eagles, a square brute from the hard hills of the Lehigh Valley who played both center and linebacker, every play, as the Eagles captured their most recent championship with a 17-13 win over the Green Bay Packers.

It was Dec. 26, 1960, and the world would never be the same again.

"We got $3,500 each for winning that game. That was a hell of a lot of money," Bednarik says. "I bought a car."

Those were the last championship checks cashed by the Eagles, and even that group fell quickly back to earth. Quarterback Norm Van Brocklin left to coach the expansion Minnesota Vikings the following season. Coach Buck Shaw retired, and no Eagles head coach would record a winning record during his tenure until Dick Vermeil.

Picking out one play from 75 years of football to stand as the shining moment for a franchise is an illusory task. The perspective is different for each generation, the sand of what constitutes greatness shifts beneath the feet.

Was it a great individual play . . . Randall scrambling around forever before finding a receiver 70 yards downfield in an otherwise meaningless game . . . a great combination of teamwork . . . a season-altering play, even if not that amazing itself . . . What would be the best? All those years, all those plays.

Every list is different, and every one yields a legitimate argument. For me, make it 1960. Make it the championship game. Make it Bednarik.

The Packers were a team becoming. Their young head coach, Vince Lombardi, had taken a doormat team in 1959 and made it into the surprise Western Conference champions of 1960. That decade, the Packers would go on to win five NFL championships (and the first two Super Bowls against the as-yet unabsorbed AFL).

The roster of accomplishments would not begin against the Eagles, however.

The championship game went back and forth. Green Bay led the statistical battle but trailed with just over five minutes to play when Ted Dean scored on a short run to give the Eagles their 17-13 lead.

Bart Starr led the Packers downfield, fighting the Eagles' defense and the clock at the same time. The crowd murmured as Starr completed four straight passes to put the ball at the Eagles' 22 with less than a minute remaining and the clock winding.

Starr had one more completion in his arm that day, but he chose to make it in the wrong part of the field. He flipped a pass over the middle to running back Jim Taylor, who broke one tackle and saw nothing but end zone in front of him. Then, suddenly, he saw a lot of Chuck Bednarik.

"He was an extremely good runner," Bednarik says. "All of them were good, a bunch of really rugged kids. I guess if he got by me, they score and they win."

Taylor had gained 13 yards on the play and was inside the Eagles' 10 when Bednarik got hold of him. Getting by him wasn't going to happen. The two of them went down, with Bednarik flattened on top of Taylor, and Bednarik began to watch the sweep of the second hand on the old scoreboard clock that hung on Weightman Hall at the open end of the stadium. Taylor struggled beneath him and Starr tried to get the Packers to the line for one more play.

From the sideline, receiver Tommy McDonald took it all in, and decided: "Nobody's getting up."

The clock reached zero, the gun sounded, and Bednarik finally rose.

"You can get up now, Jim," Bednarik recalls saying. "This [expletive] game is over."

Fans swarmed the field, made a brief attempt to pick up Bednarik, thought better of it, and settled for merely surrounding him as he stood with his arms raised among them.

"You know, they haven't had a championship since that one," Bednarik says.