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What I best remember. I’m 80.
1943 season. This season saw the team’s first winning season in its 11-year history, with a finish of 5-4-1. In 1944, however, the Eagles finally experienced good fortune, as they made their finest draft pick to date: running back Steve Van Buren. At last, the team’s fortunes were about to change.

Led by Van Buren and Neale, the Eagles became a serious competitor for the first time. They had their first winning season as a separate team in 1944. After two more second-place finishes (in 1945 and 1946), the Eagles reached the NFL title game for the first time in 1947. Van Buren, end Pete Pihos, and Bosh Pritchard fought valiantly, but the young team fell to the Chicago Cardinals 28-21 at Chicago’s Comiskey Park. Undeterred, the young squad rebounded and returned to face the Cardinals once more in the 1948 championship. With home-field advantage (and a blinding snowstorm) on their side, the Eagles won their first NFL Championship 7-0. Due to the severity of the weather, few fans were on hand to witness the joyous occasion. That would not be the case the following season, however, when the Eagles returned to the NFL championship game for the third consecutive year and won in dominating fashion in front of a large crowd in Los Angeles, beating the Los Angeles Rams 14-0.

In Thompson’s final draft, Chuck Bednarik was selected as the first overall pick in the 1949 NFL Draft. An All-American lineman/linebacker from the University of Pennsylvania, Bednarik would go on to become one of the greatest and most beloved players in Eagles history. The 1949 season also saw the sale of the team by Thompson to a syndicate of 100 buyers, known as the “Happy Hundred”, each of whom paid a fee of $3,000 for their share of the team. While the leader of the “Happy Hundred” was noted Philadelphia businessman James P. Clark, one unsung investor was Leonard Tose, a name that would eventually become very familiar to Eagles fans.[3]