By:  Rachel Orenstein

Saturday, January 21st, 2023

The stadium shakes as cheering fans stomp their feet. It's very loud. Blaring music amplifies an atmosphere thick with excitement. The crowd around you sings a fight-song - Fly, Eagles, Fly! - and you watch the great big field from your own bird’s eye view. 

There is a timelessness to this sport. To your left is a family with two young children cheering from their parents’ laps. Their faces are painted the colors of their team. Behind the group sits an older couple, just as decked out in black and midnight green as nearly everyone else in the stadium. Love for football passed down through generations: a distinctly American passion. Players and fans both change and still the team remains. The spirit of a city, of "brotherly love" for passionate Philadelphia.

The Eagles score another touchdown and cheers erupt again. Three green flares shoot up above the field. Once you sit back down, you pull your team-spirited blanket closer around yourself. You can almost see your breath but not quite. It's warmer than January usually is. The sky is dark but the stadium is too bright to see any stars. A blood moon rises above the horizon, still low enough to appear mysteriously large. As soon as one person points it out, the entire section of the crowd is looking towards it and trying to take pictures on their cell phones. 

It's cute, this apparent instinct for people to record whatever they find interesting. Ancient humans behaved similarly, admiring the rust-colored moon just as us. Cheering in energetic stadiums and watching war games, just as us. But unluckily for them, they never knew the glory of soft pretzels and popcorn.

Victory! The game nears its end and the Eagles have far surpassed the Giants’ score. With only seconds left on the clock, the quarterback takes a knee at each hike. The game is over before it's over.

The crowd descends and flows out of the stadium, still chanting from the excitement of it all. As you exit the building, you notice the Philadelphia skyline lit in the distance. Perhaps you were tired or perhaps staring at the field for so long messed with your eyes, but you could have sworn the city had a distinctly green haze.