Flowers: She can’t say she’s much of a Jason Kelce fan, anymore

I was going to let it rest.

I had said my piece on social media. I was preparing for the parade which will pass in front of my building. I have excavated every green possession that I accumulated over 63 years, excluding expired food stuffs.

Onward, I thought. It is time to be gracious because, to quote the great Freddy Mercury, we are the champions of the world.

But there was still that nagging sense that it wasn’t over, this slow burn of anger in me at what I — and many of my friends — see as ingratitude and a misplaced sense of family loyalty. Yes, I am talking about the Kelce controversy.

For so many years, over a decade, Jason Kelce was a beloved member of the Philadelphia community. It wasn’t just Eagles Nation, although of course that was a large part of it.

This outsized personality with the overgrown beard and the profanity-spewing mouth, the giant heart and the sense of humor to match, became an irreplaceable member of the city.

Like very few other transplants, he was able to tap into our essential zeitgeist and become a Philadelphian.

He was a Midwest version of Ed Rendell, that New Yorker who answered our Prayers for the City, with due deference to Buzz Bissinger.

He was Bernie Parent without that funny but endearing accent. He was the fuzzy, giant marsupial who won the heart of the golden suburban princess, Kylie, and produced golden baby princesses with adorable Philadelphia accents.

We loved him.

Many still do. I have to admit that I didn’t then, definitely don’t now, but I can understand why he was embraced by the rest of us.

My “he’s not entirely authentic” meter went off when he started becoming ubiquitous on soup commercials and in podcasts and on late night TV, and in that weird tandem he has with his brother.

This is his comment about his brother on Twitter: “There isn’t a person in the world that I love or care about more.”

But I get it. I have brothers, one in heaven, two on Earth.

They will always be a part of my life, at the deepest core. However, as I noted on social media, if one of them was stupid enough to play for the team that was going up against my Eagles in the Super Bowl, I would not wish them well.

I would not want them to have a great performance.

I would not want their flashy girlfriends to hoist their cups of beer in victory, smiling their red-lipped little smirks.

And, I was never a member of the team. I never lived side by side with the players, sweated through horrific late summer preseason games, laid bare my body in sacrifice on chilly autumn afternoons, earned millions upon millions of dollars from people like me — rabid and grateful fans — and presided over an expletive-laden celebration in 2018.

I’m just a girl who has had season tickets since 1973, when I was baptized in the fire of proximity to the Vet’s 700 section as an 11-year-old.

I’m just a person who was lifted on her daddy’s shoulders so she could watch Roman Gabriel send a perfect spiral through the air.

I’m just a lady who, as an adolescent wanted Harold Carmichael to be my uncle, who as a teenager, fell in love with Wes Hopkins and wanted to have his children, who as a woman wanted to file a restraining order against the Green Bay Packers so they would not steal Reggie White from us.

But to be honest, perhaps that matters more. Because I would never hesitate, when asked about which team I am rooting for, the Eagles or the Kansas City Chiefs, the team that pays my brother big bucks to be a superstar, to choose the Eagles.

I gave them money, they never paid me a cent, and I still would pick them over strangers.

They caused me to spend the 1980s in a permanent state of anxiety, but I would still embrace them and wish for their victory over another team.

And I would say that if my brother made the mistake of taking a salary for that team’s opponent. I would forgive the sibling, of course. But root for him? Not on your life.

That is what separates the fair-weather fan from the true fanatic.

These people who say blood is thicker than water are actually correct, because the thing that unites Philadelphians, and many fans from many similar cities, is the blood tie of generational devotion to a team.

It is something that is passed down from father to daughter, mother to son, aunt to nephew and uncle to niece.

It is sometimes lost in the transmission, as when Taylor Swift somehow allowed her libido to cancel out her devotion to the team she grew up with.

But for most of us, it resists the rust and deterioration of time and frivolous affections.

For that reason, I am so over Jason Kelce.

I do not care that he has made his home in Havertown, that his wife is an adorable Cabrini grad, that his children are angels, that his mother has a closet filled with borrowed Eagles Jerseys, that he records Christmas albums, that he gives to charities, that he has a mouth bluer than the summer sky and that he was a great football player.

When it counted the most, he punted.

And that is something I won’t forget.

Not that he cares. But I do, and that’s what matters.

Christine Flowers can be reached at cflowers1961@gmail.com.