‘Fly, Eagles Fly’ fight song, explained: How it started, lyrics & more to know about Philadelphia victory anthem
If you’ve seen an Eagles home game, you’ve heard it before. After Philadelphia scores a touchdown, the crowd belts out the lyrics to a song in unison: “Fly, Eagles Fly!
“Fly, Eagles Fly” has become the team’s defining anthem and one of the most popular team-specific songs in all of American sports. It has taken on a life of its own and can now be heard at Eagles street games and sometimes at non-football sporting events. Even Coldplay performed a camouflage during his show at Lincoln Financial Field.
But where did the song come from?
Its history stretches back more than half a century, before the dawn of the modern NFL. But the melody fell into oblivion and was almost abandoned not so long ago.
This is how it went from a forgotten relic of the past to the defining song it is today:
The Story of “Fly, Eagles Fly”
Let’s start with an important note: the song’s name isn’t even technically “Fly, Eagles Fly”. Its real name is the simpler “The Eagles’ Victory Song”.
It was founded by Charles Borrelli and Roger Courtland in the 1950s. The original version didn’t even include the words “fly, Eagles fly”. Instead, it said “fight, eagle fight”.
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It was first played at Eagles games in the 1960s by the Philadelphia Eagles Sound of Brass, a marching band of nearly 200 musicians and dancers who performed at the team’s games. Partly because the team was terrible at the time and partly because the team was sold to a new owner, the song and the band disappeared.
Decades later, the song was little more than a relic. That all changed in 1997 when a man named Bob Mansure asked the Eagles if he could form a band to play in the parking lot before home games. The team agreed and Mansure dug the tune from the archives to play it to the fans.
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The old version was a bit dated, so Mansure cut the length from more than five minutes to just 33 seconds, changing the words and arrangement to appeal to a modern audience. The new version we know today as “Fly, Eagles Fly” was an instant hit among Philly faithful, so much so that they began playing it hundreds of times before games and after every Eagles touchdown.
A new tradition was born. Mansure and his band rose to fame and began appearing on local television stations and at pep talks across the city. Team owner Jeffrey Lurie fell in love with the song and even began putting the lyrics on the jumbotron at games so fans unfamiliar with the lyrics could sing along.
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Now you can’t spend 10 minutes in Philadelphia on an Eagles game day without hearing the fans chant the familiar chant from the song, “EAGLES!” Eagles!”
Text “Fly, Eagles Fly”.
Fly eagle, fly!
On the way to victory! (Fight, fight, fight!)
Fight, eagles fight!
Score a touchdown 1, 2, 3! (1! 2! 3!)
Hit ’em deep!
hit her up!
And watch our eagles fly!
Fly eagle, fly!
On the way to victory!
Eagle!
Eagle!