As the Super Bowl approaches, our city of underdogs finds itself in the unfamiliar role of favorite

The Philadelphia Eagles, you may have heard, will play for the championship of the National Football League in the Super Bowl Sunday evening, carrying not just the hopes of an entire region that has known its share of sports disappointments, but also bearing the relatively unusual weight of expectation.

For a city whose default civic persona is that of the embattled underdog — cue the montage of Rocky sprinting up the Art Museum steps in search of a side of beef to tenderize with his bare knuckles — standing on the precipice of a great accomplishment as a favorite is both dizzying and somehow untrustworthy. (Note to Rocky: The beef is kept with the post-Impressionists.)

Preferring life as an underdog is a coat Philadelphia claims to wear well, if only to protect it from the cold wind of disappointment. Hemmed in by more glamorous and powerful neighbors along the East Coast, it also provides an identity upon which to hang a defiant hat even larger than the one resting on the bronze head of William Penn atop City Hall.

From the outside, this is nonsense, of course, considering it is a city that birthed the nation’s first library, stock exchange, hospital, and medical school, and hosted, in the small Assembly Room at the Pennsylvania State House, the very creation of the country. That event was so momentous, the building’s name was changed to Independence Hall.

Since Philadelphia lost its standing as the largest city in the United States to New York in 1790, the same year that Congress agreed to move the nation’s capital to a fetid bit of swampland on the Maryland-Virginia border, the chip on Philadelphia’s shoulder has grown, at least metaphorically, into an oak, and a simplistic narrative can substitute for the actual complexity of the place.

So, in a city of phenomenal culinary variety and quality, the cheesesteak, often dreadfully prepared, is the standard suggestion for visitors. And on and on. Slang is favored over well-schooled speech, and there is even a homegrown word — jawn — that manages to mean everything and nothing at the same time.

This, in a city that has more college and university students than Boston, the supposed Athens of America. Mentioning that, however, destroys the illusion, and illusion has served Philadelphia well, including its sports fans. As noted football expert Bob Dylan said, when you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.

Would that it were true for Eagles fans as they hunker down Sunday evening for this next milepost game that has come up so quickly along the highway. The Eagles were barely a winning team last season and are five years removed from their stunning last championship. To have this new chance arrive, and so quickly on the heels of a surprising Phillies run to the World Series, is a giddy treat, but also strange because now the team is supposed to win.

“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed,” Alexander Pope, the poet, wrote. Pope, left hunchbacked and shrunken by tuberculosis of the spine before he was a teenager, knew what he was talking about. Eagles fans, if they study team history before Sunday evening’s game against the Kansas City Chiefs and former coach Andy Reid, should do their best to keep expectations in check as well.

This is only the fourth appearance by the Eagles during the NFL’s Super Bowl era, which began with the 1966 season. They were also favored in their first go, a three-point choice against the Oakland Raiders in the first week of the Reagan administration.

Some say the eventual 27-10 loss was caused by an overly harsh week of practice directed by coach Dick Vermeil — “Nobody ever drowned in sweat,” Vermeil was fond of saying — but the game frayed for a much simpler reason. Quarterback Ron Jaworski threw three interceptions to the same slew-footed linebacker and fumbled away yet another possession.

It is a testament to Jaworski’s pleasant nature, or perhaps to Philadelphia’s comfortable relationship with disappointment, that he remains a cherished local personality to this day, despite perhaps the worst big-game performance in the city’s sports history.

If Philadelphia’s civic personality is truly that of an underdog valiantly fighting the odds against it, that was cemented, at least for Eagles fans, by the team’s most recent Super Bowl appearance.

You know how that turned out.

It is every local’s fondest wish that the exalted really will be humbled, and the humble exalted, particularly since the preferred casting in this city is the latter. Doesn’t often happen that way, though. Favorites earn their status, and the Eagles have done that throughout the season. Fans will have to live with supporting Apollo Creed this time around and hope the story comes out a little differently.

Bob Ford was a staff writer and columnist for The Inquirer from 1987 to 2020.