"On The Wings of Eagles": The Golden Age (1940-49)
The 1940s would prove a tumultuous and ultimately triumphant decade for the young club. In 1940, the team moved from Philadelphia Municipal Stadium to Shibe Park. Lud Wray's half-interest in the team was purchased by Art Rooney, who had just sold the Pittsburgh Steelers to Alexis Thompson. Soon thereafter, Bell/Rooney and Thompson swapped franchises, but not teams. Bell/Rooney's entire Eagles' corporate organization, including most of the players, moved to Pittsburgh (The Steelers' corporate name remained "Philadelphia Football Club, Inc." until 1945) and Thompson's Steelers moved to Philadelphia, leaving only the team nicknames in their original cities. Since NFL franchises are territorial rights distinct from individual corporate entities, the NFL does not consider this a franchise move and considers the current Philadelphia Eagles as a single unbroken entity from 1933.
After assuming ownership, Thompson promptly hired Greasy Neale as the team's head coach. In its first years under Neale, the team continued to struggle. In 1943, when manpower shortages stemming from World War II made it impossible to fill the roster, the team temporarily merged with the Steelers to form a team popularly known as the "Steagles." The merger, never intended as a permanent arrangement, was dissolved at the end of the 1943 season. This season saw the team's first winning season in its 11-year history, with a finish of 5-4-1. In 1944, however, the Eagles finally experienced good fortune, as they made their finest draft pick to date: running back Steve Van Buren. At last, the team's fortunes were about to change.
Led by Van Buren and Neale, the Eagles became a serious competitor for the first time. They had their first winning season as a separate team in 1944. After two more second-place finishes (1945 and 1946), the Eagles reached the NFL title game for the first time in 1947. Van Buren, end Pete Pihos and Bosh Pritchard fought valiantly, but the young team fell to the Chicago Cardinals, 28-21, at Chicago's Comiskey Park. Undeterred, the young squad rebounded and returned to face the Cardinals once more in the 1948 championship. With home-field advantage (and a blinding snowstorm) on their side, the Eagles won their first NFL Championship, 7-0. Due to the severity of the weather, few fans were on hand to witness the joyous occasion. That would not be the case the following season, however, when the Eagles returned to the NFL championship game for the third consecutive year and won in dominating fashion in front of a large crowd in Los Angeles, beating the Los Angeles Rams, 14-0.
In Thompson's final draft, Chuck Bednarik was selected as the first overall pick in the 1949 NFL Draft. An All-American lineman/linebacker from the University of Pennsylvania, Bednarik would go on to become one of the greatest and most beloved players in Eagles history. 1949 also saw the sale of the team by Thompson to a syndicate of 100 buyers, known as the "Happy Hundred", each of whom paid a fee of $3,000 for their share of the team. While the leader of the "Happy Hundred" was noted Philadelphia businessman James P. Clark, one unsung investor was Leonard Tose, a name that would eventually become very familiar to Eagles fans.
Read more about this topic: History Of The Philadelphia Eagles
Famous quotes containing the words wings, golden and/or age:
“A sudden blow; the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl,”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Beneath the azure current floweth;
Above, the golden sunlight glows.
Rebellious, the storm it wooeth,
As if the storms could give repose.”
—Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841)
“I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)