Has the luck of Philadelphia sports teams suddenly and unexplainably turned… lucky… or is there a completely irrational, yet entirely believable, explanation?

Sports Utopia, CENTER CITY PHILADELPHIA - For over twenty-five years, men and women throughout the “city of brotherly love” cheered local franchises, both with and without the assistance of alcohol (but mostly with), knowing full well that winning a championship was something saved for teams that represented other cities. Then, in 2008, a seemingly innocuous baseball team, with many of the same players that had failed to achieve much joint success in the past, blew through every other team in the major leagues and won the World Series in such an effortless manner that it made the twenty-five year gap between supreme victories seem silly and unnecessary. Philadelphia celebrated like crazed animals, but there hung a palpable disbelief in the air. A city gets accustomed to losing, and the dependability of this losing is associated with certain monumental obstacles that are… well… too monumental to easily alter. When a team goes from losing a lot to winning a lot, with only a few alterations here and there, it drives a wedge between fans and their sanity. No one wants to believe that their mediocre squad is just a few moves away from hoisting a trophy in the sky; that makes no sense– bad teams need complete overhauls, from front office personnel to bat-boys and grounds-crew. So, when teams improve without the assistance of radical change, sports fans have no choice but to attribute success to a higher power known in many circles as “The Sports Gods”. The Eagles miraculous playoff birth last week (despite being completely undeserving, and often disguising themselves as a junior varsity football squad– reference The Bengals tie) has many Philadelphians professing their belief in these sports deities, and praying that whatever has put the city o’ love in omnipotent good standing, continues. With the Birds definitive victory over the Vikings this past weekend, fans’ religious convictions will likely grow stronger, and attempts to please the Gods through wacky shows of superstition will likely grow wackier. Given a sports history that includes such suffering at the hands of the Gods, it seems like the only thing to do.

But who are these Sports Gods really, and do they actually care whether people refrain from washing their own underwear?

Miraculously, Receiving Me? has uncovered documents that separate fact from fiction: blueprints for pleasing the guys in the sky who really control the outcomes of athletic events. Welcome to the sports gospel truth according to the prophet Athleticus: