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Devoted to Eagles

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Times Staff Writer

The governor of Pennsylvania did not heave that snowball from the top of Veterans Stadium in the direction of Jimmy Johnson and the Dallas Cowboys in 1989, when the governor was still mayor of Philadelphia.

He might have suggested a drunk do it.

And in 2000, through all those long ballot-counting nights of the Bush-Gore election when he was chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Ed Rendell always appeared ready to take names and tear into some hanging chads.

But the Eagles’ 20-17 overtime victory over Green Bay last weekend almost knocked Rendell out. He was begging to bail out early on the two-hour Comcast Sports Cable postgame show he helps host.

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Rendell, Democrat and governor of the country’s sixth-most-populous state, is the self-described “voice of the fan” on the show devoted to all things Eagles.

Grades are given -- Rendell once gave Coach Andy Reid an “F” after a loss -- plays are dissected, players are skewered.

“Where’s the running game?” Rendell will howl.

Rendell has been part of the Eagles’ postgame panel discussion on Comcast since the show’s creation in 1997, when he was mayor.

The show features Vaughn Hebron, the former running back; Ray Didinger, who wrote for the Philadelphia Daily News and now does the same for NFL Films, and Michael Barkann, familiar to tennis fans as USA Network’s roving reporter at the U.S. Open.

When the show began, Didinger said, Rendell was invited to wish fans and the Eagles well and to give his mayoral blessing.

“But the then-mayor came on the set, sat down and just started talking about the game,” Didinger said. “He really got into it. He was very much in his element.”

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Stephanie Smith, general manager of Comcast SportsNet, said hiring Rendell was easy.

“He’s beyond entertaining,” she said. “He’s a passionate, entertaining, rabid Eagles’ fan. He was the missing piece of the puzzle. The voice of the rabid fan.”

So Rendell returned the second week. And the third.

“I kept thinking, ‘These guys get paid to sit around and talk sports. What a great deal!’ ” he said.

Through his time as mayor, his year as chairman of the DNC (in 2000 during the presidential election) and now into his second year as governor, Rendell has missed only one show, besides the eight he had to forgo last year during the gubernatorial campaigning.

“That equal time thing, ya know?” Rendell said.

“But I said all along that win or lose, I’d be on the show the week after the election. And I was.”

The governor was speaking by telephone at 11:30 p.m. from Harrisburg, the state capital. For 45 minutes, Rendell was a passionate advocate for the ferocity of the Eagle defense, the resilience of his favorite team to persevere through several serious injuries and the despair he will feel Monday, should the Eagles, for the third consecutive year, lose in the NFC championship game today.

“It can’t happen again,” Rendell said of the possibility Philadelphia might lose to the Carolina Panthers at Lincoln Financial Field, squandering a chance to appear in the Super Bowl for the first time since 1981.

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“It would be almost too hard to bear, for the team and the city.”

There is something about the Eagles that brings out the fan in politicians.

Arlen Specter, the Republican U.S. Senator, has called sports-talk radio station WIP every Monday morning this year after Eagle games.

Specter, looking to be nominated for a fifth term in an April primary, and Rendell might have risked losing the support of Pittsburgh Steeler fans in the western part of the state, Washington Redskin fans in the south-central part of the state and even some New York Jet and Giant fans in the northeastern part of the state, according to Michael X. Delli Carpini, dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communication, but he said the charm of Specter and especially Rendell is their genuine love of the Eagles.

“Increasingly, I think you will see public officials show another side in entertainment kinds of venues,” Delli Carpini said. “You certainly see public officials more and more on late-night talk shows, calling in to radio shows that are more entertainment-oriented.

“Especially with Ed Rendell, what the public sees is so genuine. He’s a very passionate fan with real knowledge about football. Ultimately, the fan in Pittsburgh understands that Ed Rendell is not fake and he’s not doing the show as a politician. He’s doing it as a fan.”

Rendell has had Eagle season tickets for more than 30 years. Though he could have sat in the comfortable mayoral box, he always chose to sit outside. He still does. When he was mayor, Rendell was seen frequently at the Palestra, where his alma mater, Penn, plays basketball.

And, in the best tradition of bombastic sports-talk show hosts, Rendell was never shy about expressing his opinions of his beloved Eagles. Even when he was mayor.

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For example, there was the snowball incident, of which there are three versions.

At that Cowboy game in 1989, as the Eagles were closing out a 20-10 victory, some fans began hurling snowballs and ice balls toward the Cowboys and Coach Jimmy Johnson.

One legend has it that Rendell lobbed snowballs. Another version is that Rendell paid a fan to aim at Johnson.

Rendell has his own version.

“C’mon, I was trying to be the good guy,” Rendell said. “I bet a drunken man he couldn’t hit the field with a snowball.”

Rendell claims he was trying to distract the inebriated man so he would leave other fans alone.

There are no conflicting versions about what happened in 1999, when the Eagles, holding the No. 2 pick in the NFL draft, were torn between quarterback Donovan McNabb and Heisman Trophy-winning running back Ricky Williams.

Didinger, the former columnist, said that Rendell put his arm around Williams and ushered the Texas back into the Maxwell Club banquet, where Williams was to receive another player-of-the-year award.

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Reid, who had made it clear he preferred McNabb, was on the dais, visibly embarrassed.

Rendell also urged Eagle fans to call the team in a campaign to draft Williams. So many did, the team’s phone system broke down.

When McNabb was drafted by the Eagles in New York, Philadelphia fans there booed loud and long at the selection.

Even now, after McNabb has made the Pro Bowl and led the Eagles to three NFC championship games, Rendell won’t totally back down on his opinion.

“In retrospect I was wrong, in that if you have the choice between someone who will be a great quarterback and someone who will be a great running back, you go with the quarterback,” he said. “But I was not wrong about Ricky Williams. He has the skill and durability to be the best running back of this era.”

And Rendell isn’t certain McNabb has truly forgiven him.

“People would ask Donovan how I was on TV and Donovan would answer, ‘He’s a good mayor.’ Now I suppose he says I’m a good governor.”

Neil Oxman, a Democratic political consultant and president of the Campaign Group in Philadelphia, said Rendell helped himself in the gubernatorial election with his rabid fandom.

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“He showed those people up north of the [Pennsylvania] Turnpike, west of Harrisburg, that he is a real human being,” Oxman said. “Here’s a New York liberal Jewish guy -- remember, no Philadelphia Democrat since the turn of last century has been elected governor -- who bridged the gap. No question, the show connects Rendell to the rest of the state. There is no downside.”

Josh Wilson, Republican state political director, thinks there is some downside, though.

“We had a hard time getting a state budget passed here,” Wilson said. “When the governor is leaving every week for a football game, some people wonder. I guess what I would say about his appearance on the show is, the governor does know a lot about fumbles.”

Rendell says such criticism is silly.

“You could shoot a Gatling gun down the halls of the state capitol on Sundays,” Rendell said, “and not hit a living thing.”

Although Jesse Ventura, as governor of Minnesota, was publicly and privately skewered for doing commentary on NBC’s failed XFL pro football league, Delli Carpini said there was a good explanation.

“It was a very different kind of circumstance,” he said. “Jesse Ventura came out of the entertainment world. Ventura made his mark outside of politics, so it backfired. Gov. Rendell had been a mayor and national Democratic Party chairman. People knew him as a hard-working politician. This sports role was consistent with his gregarious personality.”

Rendell calls himself “the Eagles’ fan,” saying, “I am on the show representing all the fans.

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“In the fall of 2001, when I did a campaign tour around the state, I was in Wilkes-Barre. I had finished my speech in the town square and was walking into a hot dog shop. An older, retired man and his wife recognized me and came out. They said hello and the wife said, ‘He’s voting for you,’ implying she wasn’t. I said, ‘Oh, that’s great.’ And he said, ‘You were a good mayor of Philadelphia, but I’m really voting for you because you’re on that sports show.’ ”

Didinger said the Eagles’ overtime victory over the Packers last Sunday took a toll on the governor.

“We were on from 8 p.m. until 10 p.m.,” Didinger said. “Because of overtime, we got on at 8:15. The first hour it was pure adrenaline. We took a break at 9:15 and the governor visibly, physically slumped in his chair and said, ‘I’m drained. I’m exhausted. I can’t go until 10. Can you wrap this thing up and get us off?’

“The game had taken that much out of him and here’s a guy, how many elections nights this guy has sweated out, the election night with Gore and Bush, running for governor himself, yet that’s how emotionally invested he is in this team.”

Rendell is predicting a 24-14 Eagle triumph over the Panthers today.

“I don’t think it will be easy,” Rendell said. “Carolina’s got a pretty good offense, pretty good defense. But these guys, our guys, I’ve never seen anything like it. They are so dedicated to succeeding. If they lose, this city will be crushed. So will I.... For that to happen in this sports-mad city, it’s unthinkable.”

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