
Quick Gripe: I am Begging the Eagles to Leave Seven Nation Army in Happy Valley, Where it Belongs
We’ll get it back to Posidelphia in a second, but a quick gripe:
What’s with Seven Nation Army at Eagles games? Did they just start playing it this year? They used it at least three times at Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday night and played it the week before as well. This is a terrible development.
Why? Well, first, The White Stripes blow. Awful band. If you took the worst elements of garage rock, indie, and folk, you’d get The White Stripes. Second, this song came out in 2003 and has been played at sporting events for close to 20 years now, so it’s not new and there’s nothing unique about it. 2006 was when it really exploded over speaker systems countrywide, notably in Happy Valley. If you watch a Penn State game on television you will find yourself wondering if the Nitter band knows anything other than Seven Nation Army. They play it at least 27 times a game and getting it out of your head is harder than Drew Allar completing a downfield pass in a playoff game.
Thing is, WE ARE! – credited with bringing the song into American stadiums, as Mikey Mandarino wrote in 2017 for Onward State:
After a brief stay atop the Billboard rock charts in July 2003, the song was first sung in stadiums by fans of Club Brugge, a Belgian soccer club, in October 2003.
…
In February of 2006, AS Roma traveled to Bruges to face the Belgian club in a UEFA Cup knockout match. Although Roma won the match 2-1, the fans who traveled from Rome were impressed by the Belgian fans’ use of the song, so they brought it back to Italy with them.
Five months later, Italy defeated France on penalties to win the 2006 World Cup. Italian fans flooded the streets of Rome to celebrate their country’s first World Cup title since 1982, and “Seven Nation Army” echoed in the Roman streets long into the night. They knew the song only as the ‘po po po’ song, adopting it as Italy’s unofficial anthem for that World Cup.
“Seven Nation Army” was first played in the United States during the 2006 Blue-White spring football intrasquad scrimmage at Beaver Stadium.
Guido D’Elia, the former director of communications for the football team, heard a radio story about the Romans’ use of the song, and asked the Penn State Blue Band to perform it. If it sounded good and students sang along, the band would keep using it. If not, the song would be scrapped.
The Blue Band played the song during the annual spring game, and, as they say, the rest is history.
“Seven Nation Army” was a regular fixture in the Beaver Stadium playlist by midseason in 2006. It got enough airtime at Beaver Stadium to a point where it was even played more than the iconic “Zombie Nation” during each game.
There’s your history lesson. A guy named Guido saw the Romans do it and brought it here. I suppose we can thank the likes of Gigi Buffon and Marco Materazzi for our White Stripes nightmare since they were instrumental in winning the World Cup for the eye-talians back then.
But that’s the other big joke about this whole thing. Not only is the song played out, but the Eagles took something that Penn State started more than 15 years ago and introduced it only recently. How original! And even putting aside the PSU thing, the Baltimore Ravens have played Seven Nation Army for years and so do the Buffalo Bills, so it would be one thing if the Eagles adopted it from the college game before other NFL teams, but, alas, they did not.
The larger problem here is that nobody does anything original anymore. Certainly not in American sports, where college and high school bands just copy each other, then NFL teams take from college, or MLS fans tweak existing European chants and make them their own. “No one likes us, we don’t care” is something Jason Kelce took from the Sons of Ben, who took it from Millwall. The Flyers borrowed “Doop” from the Union, which was stolen from Borussia Monchengladbach by Peter Nowak. Is there anything besides “Fly Eagles Fly” that we actually created for ourselves? I’m struggling to think of one. I don’t think there is one. We’ve largely just co-opted stadium anthems and jock jams and assimilated them into a generic playlist. We need more stuff that we can own, like Dreams and Nightmares.
And no, you can’t just snap your fingers and create a tradition out of thin air. That’s equally artificial. These things need to happen naturally and everyone has to be in agreement, which is easier said than done. You can’t just hand out a piece of paper to 65,000 people and say “alright, we’re gonna do this today!” It doesn’t work that way either, not unless you’re some 21-year-old Providence student getting your insult prep sheet before a big basketball game.
To end on a positive, at least we never adopted Sweet Caroline. I’d rather remove my ears with a rusty hacksaw than sing Neil Diamond with a bunch of Red Sox or Pitt fans. Put Sweet Caroline in the bagster!
I hate the @Eagles right now but remain grateful we’re not a seven nation army stadium.
— Laura Hayes 🍣 (@LauraHayesDC) January 22, 2024
My 29th Amendment bans Seven Nation Army at sporting events and makes it a capital crime.
— Arnold Becker 🇺🇸🇮🇱 (@bruinoregonalt) January 26, 2025