In 50 years, Eagles ticket manager Carlin has gotten all kinds of requests

When it comes to fielding requests, Leo Carlin has heard it all during his 50 years in the Eagles' ticket department. Given how the popularity of the team has soared since he joined the organization prior to the 1960 championship run, Carlin has been so inundated that it occurred to him that he should compile a David Letterman-style "Top 10 List" of some of the more colorful excuses fans have given him to acquire better seats.

Courtesy of Carlin, here is an abridged version:

(Drum roll, please . . . )

No. 9: I like my seat. Please move the obnoxious guy next to me.

No. 4: I have to be moved. You sat me next to my ex-wife and her boyfriend.

And No. 1: Carlin, when we moved from Franklin Field to the Vet, you really put the screws to me. And, by God, you did it again!

It all gives Carlin a chuckle, yet it underscores something that he has always said: "We have always enjoyed the mayhem of a good football crowd." The Eagles currently have a waiting list of 40,000 names, which is a far cry from the way it was when Carlin joined them in the spring of 1960. Formerly the treasurer for the Walnut Street Theatre, Carlin, 73, has been with the Eagles through the "incredibly tedious" process of four stadium changes: Franklin Field to Veterans Stadium in 1970; back to Franklin Field prior to that same year when the organization was told that the Vet would not yet be ready; on to the Vet in 1971; and then to Lincoln Financial Field in 2003.

"Fifty years!" exclaimed Carlin, who not long ago also celebrated his 50th wedding anniversary. "I am in a state of shock."

When Carlin joined the Eagles, they operated out of a location at 15th and Locust. Carlin remembers how he used to stand at the window and collect payments for season tickets, which fans paid for by check or with cash (no credit cards then) and which the team had scattered at various places in the office. In the years when there were playoff tickets to sell at the Vet, Carlin remembered how the line would wrap around the stadium, and how the fans would build bonfires and have coffee and doughnuts. Carlin said, "It was kind of exciting."

Technology has changed that. Long gone are the days when he used to send out season tickets by metered mail. In fact, he said that purchases are now routed through Ticketmaster. With the bar coding that has been implemented, Carlin said it has cut down on the game-day issues with which he had had to deal.

"Duplicate seating use to be more of a problem," said Carlin, a Saint Joseph's graduate. "At the Vet, I would have five people in the same seat because of counterfeiting, and I would have to be judge and jury. I would tell people: 'Don't buy off the street. It's a big gamble.'"

Wherever he goes, Carlin said people come up to him and ask if he can help them get seats. But he said that it "comes down to supply and demand," and he has to calmly explain that to people: the demand outweighs the supply.

"It never bothers me when people ask – and I mean that, sincerely," he said. "But it is always difficult to have to say no."

But he knows that they will always keep asking, if only because 50 years with the Eagles have shown him this: Philadelphia is a "great, great, great football town."