Sports, Duct Tape, And Democracy: How 2 Birds Fans Built A Uniquely Philly Icon

PHILADELPHIA, PA — On a humid and hot nineties afternoon deep in the heart of Delaware County, a young boy, a rabid new sports fan and athlete already, dreaming of glory as only children can, sat looking at his childhood driveway basketball court.

He was trying to scheme some way to mark out the paint of a realistic hardwood hoops floor, the foul line, the key lines, so the driveway could more convincingly pass in the vivid imaginations of him and his family and friends as the Spectrum, eventually the Wachovia Center. It's the simple sort of transmogrification performed by child athletes the globe over, dreaming of Messi in a yard in Brazil or Messier on a frozen lake in the Yukon. To become a version of those athletes themselves they must do what they can to imitate the real thing. The field, the ice, the court.

Mike Howanski, squatting on the sidewalk that day in Delco, decided that duct tape was the answer.

***

Some scrim thread of those driveway dreams deferred itself through the decades to come, long decades of sports heartbreak in the vein of mythic tragedy that is distinctly Philadelphian. Mike and his best friend James Knox, close from many Delco summer days of hoops to long Philly nights many years later, were among the Phaithful through it all: the '97 Flyers swept by Detroit and concussed out of the history books by Scott Stevens, the one Sixers Finals appearance in the last 42 years faded away by Kobe and Shaq, and most brutally the ringless Birds, who made four consecutive NFC championships from '01 to '05 - James and Mike's four years at Chichester High School - but could never win it all.

There was never a thought about giving up, about turning away, about seeking solace in the suzerain fandoms of Boston, Dallas, Atlanta. The notion is inconceivable. "My fandom is all about being loyal through the ups and downs," Mike said. "That's everything."

The Phillies in 2008 were the riotous exception to all this. By 2017, that Red October was the lone parade down Broad Street in 34 years. Mike's Pop-Pop, a lifelong Eagles fan, died in 2017. Mike and James watched the Eagles through the fall and into the winter of 2017 with their city's droughts and disappointments in mind. All the near misses. The green heart of the city itself bleeding seemingly forever on the unparaded streets.

"Inevitably," Mike says, "You think about how many people never got to see that."

***

After the Philly Special, when 41-33 became a tattoo and Nick Foles a patron saint, when burning Brady jerseys let a green and blue glow over Oregon Avenue and the fanatics danced about the flames like a primal recreation of the hunt of the first nights of man, Mike and James sat down together and brainstormed. They felt an urge to meet the size and impossible grandeur of the moment.

The years had changed much from the summers of the duct taped court, and later days as basketball and track teammates. James, a Senior Product Manager at ADT, lives in Media with his wife and two sons. Mike lives near the Linc in south Philly with his wife and son and daughter. He's a registered nurse and a supervisor with Jefferson Health. Both are 37. But their passion for both athletics and the comically theatrical — things which laced their personalities and their friendship — remained untempered. If anything, it grew with them.

As Mike would later put it, "we were waiting for that parade our entire lives."

And in a way, the Duct Tape Lombardi was waiting for them, too. James studied architecture at Temple University, so he knew design. Both had eyed the trophy every Super Bowl of their lives they could remember. Their best approximation of it, built with duct tape, came together seamlessly. The creation quickly grew, from family spectacle, to iconic photo opportunity on the streets of the 2018 parade, and finally to something of a religious icon, hands laid on by fans and radio hosts and athletes and coaches and finally lost and then found again, intact, a Philadelphia Holy Grail.

***

As the parade passed down Broad Street that blustery day in 2018, Mike and James tossed their icon up toward the bus.

"Having a prop is just fun, it brings people together," Mike says of that moment.

Several Eagles workers and media members grabbed the flying trophy. A roar went up from the crowd, including Mike and James and their families.

The players roared back. They pumped it in the air. They agreed with Mike.

The Duct Tape Lombardi traveled. Photos and videos had it all over the city, hoisted by players, touched by fans. It was spotted next to Jason Kelce in front of the Manayunk brewery. It wound its way to the Art Museum steps. After the madness of the parade died down it was gone. Mike and James started a lighthearted social media campaign to find it and it immediately drew a massive response from fans across the city. Fans who'd either laid on hands or found themselves charmed by its ineffable magic. That was when Mike and James began to understand they'd tapped into something more than just a gimmick.

***

More than 1.4 million Eagles fans turned out for the 2018 and 2025 Super Bowl parades in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia contains multitudes. Crowds of every stripe packed every available inch along Broad Street. And yet to Mike and James, one of the most noticeable and memorable things about one of the highlights of Philadelphia sports history was the way the crowds shared the space. The world without may be forever and increasingly fractious, but in the notorious and sometimes violent world of Philly sports, the masses were deferential, kind, unified. They shared drinks and snacks. They bundled together for warmth against the elements. They made way for children to get to the front of the crowds to see the team go by.

"It's just a beautiful thing," Mike says. "All different ages and races."

He pauses a moment.

"Love for the Eagles is universal."

***

The 2017 Eagles, of course, were not supposed to be champions. They carved their identity from the hunger of doubt. They lost player after player, including that year's MVP in front runner Carson Wentz, and they kept on winning. Like the 2025 Eagles would do, they dethroned a dynasty.

The team could not have been any different from the 2025 team that won it all. Help came from the least likely places. A backup quarterback rose Rudy-like to become a superstar for a weeks that would live forever. The defining play of the game, one of the most iconic in a generation, involved Foles and journeymen Trey Burton and Corey Clement. The team was a patchwork of miracles. Gritty, utilitarian, tough, held together not by something as malleable and delicate and expensive as factory glue, but something more democratic, more universal, more Philly.

***

In February 1943, 75 years before the Eagles set Broad Street ablaze, the world itself was on fire.

Hitler's regime had laid siege to the Red Army at Stalingrad. Japan won a year-long battle at Timor in the south Pacific. Fractious Allied forces fought in corners of the globe.

The war effort was universal. In the small hamlet of Amboy, some hundred miles west of Chicago, a mother of two deployed infantrymen felt an urge to meet the moment.

Her name was Vesta Stoudt and she worked in a munitions packing plant. One of her sons was in the Pacific theatre, the other deployed in the Atlantic. She noted how boxes could easily fall apart when wet, or become difficult to open with the poorly made industrial sealants and tapes of the day.

"You have sons in the service also," Stoudt wrote to then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, according to U.S. Army and Johnson and Johnson records. "We can’t let them down by giving them a box of cartridges that takes a minute or more to open, the enemy taking their lives that could have been saved had the box been taped with a strong cloth tape that can be opened in a split second."

FDR agreed. He ordered his War Department to adopt the idea. And so was born duct tape, a prayer of durability sent by a working class woman in middle America out into the fury of the fiery world to save democracy.

***

"It's meant for everyone," Mike says of the Duct Tape Lombardi. "It's something durable. People can touch it. People can take pictures with it. It's meant for all people who love the Eagles and Philadelphia. You're not gonna break it, you're not gonna hurt it. It's the perfect way to remember how joyful all of this is."

***

The Eagles themselves eventually found the trophy after the 2018 parade. They invited Mike and James and their families to the stadium to retrieve it. Mike and James ran out into the field. They met Brent Celek, who passed the icon back to its creators. They did a sort of media tour.

In the seven years that passed from the 2018 to the 2025 Super Bowl wins, Mike and James were waiting. They apprehended the scope of what the "DTL" had become. What it stood for. The trophy, like the Super Bowl win itself, had brought people together. Which, to Mike and James, is the essence of sports.

This has always been in their blood. Mike went to St. Joseph's University and then Delaware County Community College and Widener University. James was a Temple Owl. They're proud "four for four" guys, NATO's mutual defense agreement adapted for Philly sports, meaning they'll do the exact same duct tape honors for each team if the Phillies, Sixers, or Flyers win it all. When they win it all. You get the sense Mike and James have little doubt.

Their ferocity is as much loyalty as it is passion. And embodying as they do all the characteristic immoderation of the City of Brotherly Love, they have a hyperawareness of the stage. For Mike's wedding, James built a replica of the Sixers bell that is gonged before home games. It was wheeled out onto the dance floor as "10, 9, 8, 76ers" rang through the Wanamaker's Crystal Tea Room as though a game were about to start a few miles down broad. Later, the Hawk mascot came flapping out through the crowd which roared under strobe lights, the dance floor flickered like the hardwood of Wells Fargo, guests became stars.

"Sports builds churches," Mike says, grinning. "It's the collective energy of the people. It's amazing what you can feel when you're a part of something like that."

***

The Duct Tape Lombardi was reborn in 2025. Mike and James started making preparations when the Birds beat Los Angeles in the divisional round and top seeded Detroit was knocked out.

And just like the Eagles won their second ring in convincingly dominant fashion, everything about the second trophy was grander and more imposing, too.

The old trophy was five feet tall, the new one is eight. It took around 10 rolls of duct tape to build. Instead of throwing their trophy up to players as the parade ran down the streets of the city, the Eagles came and picked up the DTL ahead of time. Once again, it rolled all the way down Broad through the roaring Bird gangs and up to the Art Museum steps. It had earned its place.

When seeking to put into words what it all means to him, Mike thinks back to the COVID year, with no fans in the stands. He thinks about the Subway Series in 2001, weeks after Sept. 11, when the World Series, in all its innocence, tradition, and simplicity, was something like the opposite of all the angst and animosity in the world.

"That was very tough," he said. "It reminded me, it put things into perspective for me, of how lucky we are to go to these events. It's the perfect representation of what sports can be. To share that civic pride, that bond with neighbors. How you get along with strangers in the stadium, all the people you meet, all the relationships you build."

Today, the world is divided as ever. In the age of the Internet and the 24/7 new cycle, everything is political, all of the time. People may always disagree, people may always find a way to hate, Mike says, but sports remain the great democratic force that have the great potential to heal.

"Having the conversation with someone about 'where should we bat Bryce Harper in the batting order?', it allows you to build a relationship," Mike says. "It teaches you that you can get along. Sports are very basic, simple. You might have a million things you disagree about with someone, but then you remember that (through sports) you already built a foundation for all of those other difficult conversations."

***

When Mike and James and their families ran out onto Lincoln Financial Field that day in 2018, after an Eagles employee played the entrance music and Mike clawed and scrabbled out across the yards in Brian Dawkins Wolverine style, he stopped and looked around.

He thought of the countless times he'd been up in the stands amongst the screaming thousands, he thought of the roller coaster and high drama of his Eagles fandom played out over the years in this very place, games of snow and heat, games played late in hopeless seasons, battles that could be won in a war that was always lost.

He thought of how far his team had come, how far he had come: he looked up around at the empty stands around him, but it wasn't the emptiness he noticed. It was the field itself. The exact length and width of a high school football field. The yards marked in the same manner. The same goal posts.

Years later, remembering that moment, Gene Hackman on the mind, Mike quotes Coach Norman Dale in "Hoosiers," who before the state championship game takes his team out to the court and runs a tape measure up the hoop.

"'It's the same as it is in our gym,'" he says.

The veil is lifted. The surreality of the gladiator's arena in the height of the fight is gone. Here is nature, the grass, the sky, the underlying facts of it all.

And the yard marks on the field, though painted on, like so much duct tape.