The right call

I want to thank Joe Banner and the Philadelphia Eagles for embracing sanity instead of macho pigskin bravado Sunday and postponing a game set for a head-on collision with a blizzard.

Many voices, including Gov. Rendell and my friend and blogger Will Bunch criticized the decision, saying essentially that conditions weren’t so bad, and real men play football in any weather.

Rendell said he was looking forward to “the once in a lifetime experience of seeing a pro football game played in that weather.”

I don’t know if Ed would be watching from a luxury box or a seat in the snow, but I’m positive he wouldn’t be riding SEPTA home.

Will pointed out that we have a good subway system, which is great if you live on a subway route. Most of the other SEPTA and New Jersey Transit routes you’d need to connect with the subway had major delays and even shutdowns by the time the game would have ended.

The regional rail lines were running 90 minute delays a full day later.

The truth is that you’d have had tens of thousands of frost-bitten people in life-threatening conditions at midnight or one in the morning, either stranded or waiting long periods of time with no heat.

Two of those would have been my kids, and I’m glad they were spared it.

In his blog post, Will called those who made the decision “girly-men.” I heard that his (and my former) newspaper, the Daily News had a front page mocking them.

I didn’t get to see it, because the storm apparently made girly-men of those who run the paper, too. It never made it to my house or workplace.