“It was September 1997, and the Eagles were meandering toward a losing season,” Russell recalls.
“Among the worst losses was the one against Dallas when Tom Hutton mishandled a snap on a gimme, last minute goal that would have won the game,” Russell explains. (The Cowboys won 21-20) He says it wasn’t a bad snap; Hutton simply just goofed-up holding the football for the kicker.
Russell says every sports fan in the city agonized over the loss. “How hard can it be to hold a f-- king football,” an editor said the next morning and a light bulb popped in Russell’s mind. “I don’t know. Let’s find out.”
Russell found a football, a piece of green outdoor carpet to simulate fake turf, and someone in the sports department convinced LaSalle College to send over their place-kicker.
The reporter, a photographer and the kicker set up the experiment in City Hall Courtyard and soon attracted a crowd. Volunteers in the crowd held the football for the few seconds it took for the kicker to make a clean kick. And sure enough, no one – not even a female Dutch tourist who had never seen a football – had any problem handing the pigskin.
Russell heard a familiar voice behind him asking what he was doing. It was City Councilman Rick Mariano. “I told him and he said ‘let me try.’ Just to prove it was easy, he one-handed the snap and held it in place without loosening his tie,” says the reporter.
Then Mariano (who later went to jail) said he wanted to kick one. “Here, hold this.” Mariano said, handing the surprised reporter his holstered handgun. Russell said the councilman booted the ball squarely. But Mariano said it was not long enough, “I was trying to kick into Rendell’s window.”
How hard is it to hold a football? “As Easy as One, Two, Three,” declared a Daily News headline the following day.