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SUPERFAN |
 GOV. EDWARD RENDELL |
Pennsylvania Gov. Rendell
Is A Man About Sports
of TheColumnists.com
That’s a lively group bleeding Philadelphia Eagles green on the Comcast cable pre-and post-game shows every week.
. There’s the rambunctious host, Michael Barkann, a Philadelphia TV fixture who has impressed national audiences with his excellent, uninhibited courtside interviews on USA cablecasts of the U.S. Tennis Open the past decade.
. There’s Ray Didinger, a longtime Philadelphia sportswriter, now a TV producer for NFL Films, who has encyclopedic knowledge of pro football and is respected for providing meat and potatoes expertise.
. There’s Vaughn Hebron, a former Eagle and Denver Broncos running back who provides a player’s perspective.
. And there is Ed Rendell, the Governor of Pennsylvania. That’s right, Edward Gene Rendell, the Governor of Pennsylvania. He started doing the show as the Mayor of Philadelphia more than a decade ago and is such a fixture that it is not out of the question to believe there are Eagles fans who know him as a football guy without knowing he is also a prominent politician.
Rendell is one of the guys. The others call him, “The Guv” or “Guv.” He says, “we” when talking about the Eagles. He also started to say “we” when talking about Penn State recently, and corrected himself.
He is both supportive and yet critical of Eagles personnel. He was particularly agitated earlier in the season when the Eagles passed a few times unsuccessfully from the one-yard line.
“Why wouldn’t you try a quarterback sneak,” Rendell said with feeling. “The great thing about a quarterback sneak when you have a 6 foot 1, 240-pound guy (Donovan McNabb) is that he can stand up, pick a spot and dive right in.” He argued anew for a quarterback sneak when a slow-developing running play failed at the one-yard line. He said, “It was just awful. I just don’t understand it.”
Like most Eagles fans, he has been critical
of the Eagles for passing too much. On one occasion when a succession
of passes failed, he pounded he table and said, “Run the
goddamn ball.” Like any hard-headed fan he can rip the officials
for calls against the Eagles.
When the Eagles rallied from two bad games with two impressive
performances, one over the first-place Giants, he was quick to
defend coach Andy Reid. He said, “Remember when the Giants
fans wanted to get rid of [coach] Tom Coughlin. It was much worse
than what Andy has been getting and look how he turned the Giants
around.”
As we talked on the Comcast set the day of the Eagles-Giants game, Dec. 7, he said, “I can relate to Andy and Donovan, because there is such a common bond between government officials and star athletes. I know how Donovan feels when he is criticized. I have sent him notes. I tell him that if he is being booed, it’s by maybe 10 per cent of the fans, the rest of the people are with him.”
Rendell was wearing a dark blue suit with a lapel pin commemorating Armenian and American history, and an orange tie. He sat between Barkann and Didinger. Almost 65, he looked a bit like a beefier version of the oldtime actor, Victor Moore. The comparison may be apt because Rendell is also a movie fan and sometimes, when the Eagles throw in a stinker, he suggests there may be better fare on one of he late-night movie channels.
Rendell grew up in Manhattan, went to Riverdale Prep in The Bronx where he said he was “an off-the-bench guy” in football, basketball and baseball. “I taught myself to be a good bunter so I got into the game when a bunt was needed.”
Rendell went off to the University of Pennsylvania at 17, got a law degree from Villanova and advanced in politics as district attorney, popular mayor of Philadelphia and now popular governor.
He grew up a New York Giants baseball fan. I would submit he could have been elected mayor and governor of New York, too, because of his reaction to the Giants leaving New York for San Francisco. “I was pissed,” he said. “I hated the Yankees, of course, so I started rooting for the White Sox, because they looked like the team that could beat the Yankees.” And they did in 1959 [two years after the Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers deserted New York.]
When Barkann asked him about New York mayor Michael Bloomberg’s harsh words about the shooting incident involving the Giants’ Plaxico Burress, Rendell said, “I think Bloomberg was upset that the hospital didn’t report the incident. The hospital had a legal obligation. But let’s put this in perspective. Nobody gets jail time in New York for carrying a gun.”
Philadelphia sports lore is rich with stories about Rendell, notably the snowball incident. He says he bet $20 that a drunken fan could hit an opposing coach with a snowball. The fans prefer to believe it was Rendell himself who threw the snowball.
He got all caught up lobbying for the Eagles
to select running back Ricky Williams in the 1999 draft over
Donovan McNabb. He’s come around to being a big McNabb fan,
but the memory of Rendell’s ridiculous behavior lingered
for a time with McNabb. Asked what he thought of Rendell, McNabb
said, “Great mayor.” Asked what he thought of Rendell
as a football analyst, McNabb said, “Great mayor.”
When Rendell first took on the football show, he said he didn’t
think he could embarrass himself because he saw himself as a
fan, not an expert. “I sit in the stands during a home game
and come in here frequently with some of the questions the fans
are asking out there.” He is not without expertise and informed
opinions himself.
He shrugged off criticism of his spending time with such trivia as a football show. He said, “I don’t play golf or tennis or have any other outside interests. This is my life. And if you shot a cannonball down the hall of Congress on a Sunday afternoon, you wouldn’t hit anybody.”
He goes to 90 per cent of his alma mater Penn’s basketball games because, he said, “most of the home games are on Friday nights. And the Palestra is one of the few places where people don’t ask me about politics.”
In the wake of Rendell getting criticism anew for an off-air remark taken as anti-women, Barkann opened the Eagles-Giants show by saying, “We want to warn you all that the microphone is on and is operable.” Rendell took the dig with a smile and said, “Luckily, nobody watches this.”
Rendell genuinely likes his cohorts. “The reason this show goes,” he said, “is that we are having fun.” He does seem to be having a good time, smiling a lot, supportive of the others, particularly appreciative of Didinger’s expertise. And he occasionally throws in gentle digs.
“You know,” Didinger said with a smile, “Sometimes I have to stop and think to myself. He is the Governor of Pennsylvania.”
Rendell said, “I sometimes think, “Imagine, they pay people for doing this.” He donates his fee to charity and he pays for his Eagles seats. When good play by the Eagles had the guys dreaming dreams of a Super Bowl appearance, Barkann said, “You have reservations, Guv, for Tampa? [site of the 2009 Super Bowl), He said, “Yes, but it may be for the [Pittsburgh, Pa.] Steelers.”
He told of a time he was at a popular hot dog stand in Wilkes-Barre and the lady owner told him, “My husband is voting for you-because he likes you on that football show.” When he walks in parades, he said, “some people might shout at me to lower taxes, but most of them say, ‘Go Eagles.’ ”
His Everyman persona obviously helps him with the electorate. He is shrewd, though, to soft-pedal politics on the show. “One time” Barkann said, “he came into the studio wearing an Obama button. Just before we went on the air, he realized that and he took it off.”
On the afternoon I was there a fan called in to compliment him on hosting the governor’s conference and said, “Are you going to run for President, ever? I’ll vote for you.” Rendell said, “No,” and added, “The conference went well. President-elect Obama listens. That’s an important characteristic. I think he’s going to be a great leader for the country.”
©2008 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The photo of Ed Rendell is courtesy of the Pennsylvania Governor's website. This column first posted Dec. 15, 2008.
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