The Eagles almost moved to Phoenix in 1984. One mystery about the story survived. We solved it.

TEMPE, Ariz. — Here, out here, 11 miles east of downtown Phoenix, past the strip malls and chain restaurants on Scottsdale Road, on a vast college campus where the best way to pass the time between classes is to sunbathe, near silvery office buildings that sparkle against the sky, in a stadium cut and built inside a valley of volcanic mountains and buttes … here. The Eagles would have played here.

Here is Sun Devil Stadium, home of the Arizona State football team, the original site of the Fiesta Bowl, rising over Tempe Town Lake. Here is where the Eagles’ home would have been had their former owner, Leonard Tose, followed through on his plan in December 1984 to sell the team to a real estate investor named James Monaghan. Having burdened himself with gambling debts, with the franchise having lost money during the 1982 NFL players strike, Tose was seeking a way back to solvency, and for $40 million, he was willing to relinquish 25% of the team to Monaghan and wound the souls of football fans throughout the Philadelphia area.

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On the morning of Tuesday, Dec. 11, Arizona Republic columnist Bob Hurt broke the story of the Eagles’ impending relocation. On Saturday, Dec. 15, after hours of negotiations at Tose’s house in Villanova, Philadelphia Mayor W. Wilson Goode and Tose announced that the Eagles and the city had agreed on a deal, one that included upgrades to Veterans Stadium and financial assistance from the NFL, for the franchise to remain in Philadelphia.

That five-day span more than 38 years ago stands as the past’s bleak counterbalance to the Eagles’ brilliant present: their matchup Sunday against the Kansas City Chiefs at Glendale’s State Farm Stadium in Super Bowl LVII. It was among the darkest moments in the region’s sports history. It began with a mystery: How did Hurt find out? Who was his Deep Throat? It ended after the community turned its outrage and anger like a laser toward Tose and his family, even its youngest member.

Bob Hurt wore glasses and parted his hair severely to the left and was as plugged in as a columnist could be. He had spent 10 years at The Oklahoman before The Republic hired him, and he used his laid-back manner and dry sense of humor to connect with coaches, administrators, and power people throughout college and pro football and in Arizona. When Darryl Rogers, Arizona State’s head coach in the early 1980s, embedded his team at a campground 80 miles northeast of Phoenix for preseason practices, Hurt would drive up to the site, armed with two reporting weapons: a bottle of Scotch and several pies that he had bought at a roadside stand on the way. Then he’d go from cabin to cabin, buttering up Rogers and each of his assistants with a piece of pie and a belt of brown liquor.

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So while it was shocking that the headline “Eagles appear ready to land in Phoenix” appeared across the top of The Republic’s sports section in its Dec. 11 editions, it was less surprising that Hurt had been the one to break the news. As rumors churned of his desire and need to sell the team, Tose had been denying for months that the Eagles were going anywhere. But Hurt cited five sources saying that Tose, who died in 2003, was poised to sell to Monaghan. More, the franchise would move to Phoenix “within days after the team’s 1984 season finale Sunday in Atlanta” and would use Sun Devil Stadium, which could accommodate more than 70,000 fans, as its interim home until a domed stadium could be built.

“I bet I could go down a list of people who had to know about the thing,” Hurt told The Inquirer’s Frank Dolson. “I think I could find a hundred people who knew about it before I wrote it.”

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What Hurt’s column didn’t reveal, though, was how he’d confirmed that Tose was following through on his plan.

Darrow “Duke” Tully, who was The Republic’s publisher, and Bill Shover, the paper’s public liaison and a mover-and-shaker within Phoenix’s sports and business communities, had been boosting the idea of having an NFL franchise in the city. They were so committed to the project, Shover said in a recent phone interview, that Tully worked directly with Tose in an attempt to bring the Eagles to Phoenix.

Did they think the move was going to happen?

“I did,” Shover said, “until one of our columnists blew the whole thing open.”

One day, Hurt and one of the paper’s editors asked to meet with Tully and Shover. Hurt told them that he had encountered Susan Spencer, Tose’s daughter and the Eagles’ general counsel, in a grocery store. Hurt had asked her what she was doing there, and Spencer had told him, We’re moving here, and so is the team.

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“He came to us and said, ‘I’ve got the scoop on you,’ ” Shover said. “We looked at it and said, ‘It’s got to go. Our obligation first is to report the news.’ [Tully] knew full well that might kill the whole effort, but that’s what you have to do when you’re a publisher.”

A sophomore at Episcopal Academy in late 1984, Marnie Schneider headed to school on the morning of Wednesday, Dec. 12, unworried about what awaited her, even though her mother was Susan Spencer.

The Inquirer had followed up on Hurt’s scoop, splashing four stories and three related photos across its front page after Tose and the Eagles had confirmed the story. Anticipating that any faculty and students who were Eagles fans would take out their fury on her daughter, Spencer suggested that perhaps it would be best if Marnie stayed home. (It wasn’t the first precaution that Spencer had taken on her daughter’s behalf: She already had made preliminary arrangements to have Schneider attend Phoenix Country Day School if and when the franchise’s move took place.)

But this was the last day of school before holiday break, Schneider said, and that’s the easiest and most relaxing school day of the year. “All the Christmas parties and fun stuff,” she said.

Schneider’s first class of the day was math. Her teacher, Jim Auch, had a copy of the paper tucked under his arm. He opened it up in front of her.

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“What do you know about this?” he said.

Schneider started to cry. Just then, James Crawford, Episcopal’s headmaster, peeked through a tiny window in the classroom’s door and motioned for her to come outside. Crawford told her that he was concerned for her safety. Someone might know she went to school at Episcopal, and he didn’t want to create a dangerous situation for her and her fellow students. I don’t think you should be here today, he said. One of her grandfather’s employees drove to Episcopal and picked her up.

The media in town held nothing back in their criticism of Tose and particularly of Spencer, whose iron-fisted control of the team included firing a longtime secretary in a scene that was, according to one witness, “like watching your mother get mugged.” What about loyalty? What about allegiance? What about pride? columnist Stan Hochman wrote in The Daily News. Don’t ask. Leonard Tose probably blew it at a blackjack table. “They would refer to my mom as the ‘Wicked Witch of the Vet,’ really terrible things about her and my grandfather,” Schneider said. “I don’t think they were that rotten.”

The death threats started soon thereafter.

“Oh, yeah, and kidnapping threats,” Schneider, who lives in North Carolina, said by phone. “My mom would get letters at the stadium, and they were very specific. People would call the office and say weird things. They were very vocal about their disappointment, even after the Eagles decided to stay in Philadelphia. It was a very scary time.”

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Schneider doubts Shover’s account that her mother was Hurt’s source. Spencer and Tose didn’t want anyone to know that they were in Phoenix, she said, and they went so far as to keep a hotel room in Los Angeles that they never used — a red herring to throw any enterprising reporters off their trail. “I think they were really careful.”

Hurt died in 2009 at age 84. Spencer was diagnosed with dementia five years ago and lives with Schneider in North Carolina. The two of them will watch Super Bowl LVII at home together.

“I want to capture some of that moment,” Schneider said, a moment that would have been unimaginable all those years ago: The Eagles will play a big game in the desert, and everyone in Philadelphia will be thrilled.

The Eagles are one win away from their second championship. Join Inquirer Eagles writers EJ Smith, Josh Tolentino, Jeff McLane, Marcus Hayes and Mike Sielski on Gameday Central Sunday at 5 p.m. as they preview the game at sinomn.com/Eaglesgameday