‘It’s a Philly thing’ is the Eagles’ Super Bowl slogan, but what does it mean?

When the Eagles started pushing “It’s a Philly thing” as their Super Bowl slogan, I was not a fan. What was this “Philly thing” the Eagles were referring to? Was I supposed to know? Did they?

To me, the phrase didn’t have the passion of a simple “Go Birds!” the grit of “Philly vs. Everybody,” or the attitude of “No one likes us, we don’t care.”

“It’s a Philly thing” is so generic that if you substitute other U.S. cities for Philly in a Google search of the phrase, it brings up dozens of results. “It’s a Detroit Thing” is an album, “It’s a Dallas Thing,” is a Facebook page dedicated to all things Dallas (ew), and in 2020, the Los Angeles Dodgers used “It’s an L.A. thing” as their slogan.

In other words, whatever “It’s a Philly thing” is, it’s not new, and it’s not just ours.

It wasn’t until I covered fans on Broad Street celebrating the Eagles’ NFC Championship win Jan. 29 that I realized how many people have already drunk the “It’s a Philly thing” Kool-Aid and how ready those people are to beer bong some more.

Many questions I asked Eagles fans that night (“Why did you come?” “What do you think of this crowd?” “Why did you bring your baby?”) resulted in the same response: “It’s a Philly thing.”

And everywhere I looked in the sea of people, someone was wearing an “It’s a Philly thing” shirt. At one point, I stopped to take a photo of an industrious vendor peddling pink “It’s a Philly thing” T-shirts in front of City Hall when a young woman stumbled up to me.

“Can I log into my Cash App on your phone?” she asked. “Mine died and I neeeed this shirt!”

I said no and told the woman she should not put her financial information into any stranger’s phone. Ever. The vendor, whose phone she also wanted to commandeer to log into Cash App, agreed.

The young woman stumbled away, but I couldn’t get over that she was willing to risk being fleeced to get one of those T-shirts.

Was that “a Philly thing?” Was the patient vendor selling shirts to drunken revelers “a Philly thing?” Was my advice to the woman — delivered with a “you’re-being-a-fool” tone but also with genuine concern — “a Philly thing?”

I’m not sure, but as the vendor and I smiled at each other before parting ways, it sure felt like a Philly moment. The people scaling greased poles all around us didn’t hurt the vibe either.

The seeds of “It’s a Philly thing” were planted in mid-December at a news conference by quarterback Jalen Hurts, when he said of Philly fans: “They’re with us, you know what I’m saying. When we’re on the field, when we travel, they’re with us. So, it’s a Philly thing.”

The Eagles tweeted out a video of Hurts’ remarks, captioning it “It’s a Philly thing.” By January, the team produced a hype video around the phrase, and Hurts wore it emblazoned on his sweatshirt at a news conference.

Asked later to further clarify what a Philly thing is to him, Hurts said: “I think it’s a swagger, it’s kind of in an air of its own. You know you talk about the passion in this city, the support in this city, the love for the Philadelphia Eagles in this city, it’s truly a Philly thing and not many other people, not anybody else, will understand that.”

Except, perhaps, for Kevin Bacon, who released a song called “Philly Thing” with his band, The Bacon Brothers, in November. In the refrain of that song, Bacon, a city native, sings: “Truth be told, it’s a Philly thing,” (the song has not been used by the Eagles in conjunction with their slogan).

But what is a Philly thing? When the Eagles put that question out to their fans on Twitter, responses ranged from “parking in the middle of the street” to “‘Go Birds’ being a form of hello and goodbye.”

Admittedly, those are very Philly things, but are they the “It” in the phrase at question here?

Of the dozen people I polled at Reading Terminal Market last week, every one of them liked “It’s a Philly thing,” but not all of them could define it.

“It’s a Philly thing is the way we act, it’s what we do, it’s us,” Shelia English, 73, of Upper Darby, said. “Nobody else got it. It’s not a Jersey thing, it’s not a Virginia thing, it’s a Philly thing.”

Fans on Twitter were less enthusiastic. Of 78 people who responded to an informal poll, 30 did not like the phrase, 18 loved it, 11 were ambivalent, two said it was growing on them, and the rest offered smart-aleck responses, because this is Philly.

Those who love the phrase said it embodied the passion of the city and its people; that it captured what’s unique about Philly that outsiders will never understand; and that it explained why everyone was tweeting “Go Birds” to Ann Coulter after she posted video of Philly pole climbers on Twitter and captioned it “We are seconds away from LOSING OUR DEMOCRACY!!!”

Eagles fans who don’t like the phrase said it felt forced, trite, unimaginative, meaningless, cheesy, and like it was made up in a marketing department boardroom.

Some suggested it would have been better for the Eagles to go with “It’s a Philly jawn,” but others were glad the team did not go there.

But it wasn’t until I heard from Mary Allard, 67, of Havertown, that I really started to reexamine the phrase.

“I don’t really think of it as a slogan. It’s a reply,” Allard said. “Lord knows I’ve used it many times over the years when trying to explain something to a non-Philly person.”

That’s why the phrase never felt like a rallying cry to me, I realized, because it’s not. “It’s a Philly thing” is a response and an explanation. It’s shorthand for “Yes, this is a thing we do here; yes, it’s amazing; and no, I don’t have the time or patience to explain it to you.”

So when your out-of-town friends and relatives ask: Why do they play the Eagles fight song at grocery stores and funerals? Why does that Eagles fan run into a pole for good luck before every postseason game? And why did city schools announce a two-hour delay the Monday after the Super Bowl?

You can confidently reply: “It’s a Philly thing.”