Blue, Gold, and the Other NRA
Welcome to the worst week in NFL fandom: Pro Bowl Week! That special time of year when the draft talk is overly speculative, “In Memoriam” season reviews are a thing of the past, and you’re certainly not going to watch the game in Orlando.
While you’re scouring the NYTimes Cooking app for next week’s recipes (or, like me, phoning it in and drinking your dinner), let’s take a look back at how the Eagles became, well, the Eagles.
Every Eagles fan knows about the Kelly Green throwbacks, and most of us remember the blue and golds Shady touted almost a decade ago. While both are collecting dust as Jeffrey Lurie swoons Goodell into letting the Eagles bring back something fresher than Midnight Green, that blue and gold combo tells a story about the NRA, though not the one you may be thinking of.
After a decade-long fever dream that credit isn’t a thing, the Great Depression snapped America into destitution. Philadelphia, in turn, became home to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s reactionary, revolutionary solution: the NRA. No, Philadelphia was not the gun capital of America. The National Recovery Administration was founded in 1933 to enforce the policies of FDR’s New Deal, specifically targeting greater industrial production. Rather hilariously, the NRA dissolved two years later after its parent-legislation was deemed unconstitutional, an overreach by the federal government into economic activity.
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America eventually recovered, large-in-part due to a wartime economy brought on by World War II, but Philadelphia had something else in mind: rebranding its football presence on the national stage.
Enter Bert Bell and Lud Wray. Both home-grown Philly boys who played at Penn together, the duo paid the equivalent to $42,000 in modern USD to create the Philadelphia Eagles as the successors to the Frankford Yellow Jackets who had suspended operations. Wray and Bell took the Yellow Jackets’ blue and gold scheme and paired it with FDR’s symbol of unconstitutional industrial reinvigoration, thereby birthing the Philadelphia Eagles.
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In their inaugural season, the Birds went 3-5-1 under Head Coach Wray and General Manager Bell, placing fourth in their division and missing the playoffs. But Bell and Wray had more in mind than just a team. The fathers of the Philadelphia Eagles lobbied City Hall to drop Blue Laws, allowing players to compete on Sunday, and Bell later petitioned the NFL to adopt a draft to equalize competition. Their work in tandem halted when Wray forfeited his salary following multiple unsuccessful seasons both on the field and in the bank.
If you are like me and wear your Eagles jersey in protest, you can thank the patron Saints of Philly Football, Wray and Bell, for investing in the city, and the other NRA for providing the aesthetic inspiration of the bird flying high on your no-longer-yellow-and-blue faded Jeremiah Trotter jersey.
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Categorized:Eagles Unique Columns