METAIRIE, La. — The Philadelphia Eagles will be wearing their green home jerseys when they visit the Superdome in November — thanks to a golf wager between coach Doug Pederson and New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton.
Apparently the Super Bowl-winning coach kept his hot streak going when he was paired with Payton in the annual coaches’ golf outing at the NFL meetings in March. As they started playing together, Pederson said, “those competitive juices start flowing” and they came up with a few unique bets.
The first was the jersey wager to determine which team would wear their traditional home colors during the Week 11 game in New Orleans. It ended after an intense three-hole carryover.
“There’s a good chance it involved me being in the water,” recalled Payton, who also lost a bet that required him to send a sampling of New Orleans food to the Eagles’ coaching staff.
“Hey, if I’d have kept playing, he’d have been in our locker room,” cracked Payton, who revealed the wager while on a conference call with Pederson and Arizona State coach Herm Edwards in advance of their appearance in the American Century Championship celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe later this month.
Payton and Pederson said they thought wagers like that would be more fun than simply exchanging $20 bills or something — and they even joked about making the other kick off from the 15-yard line.
Afterward, Payton said he thought, “Well, how am I gonna explain this? We’re just gonna wear color-rush white or something. … But it made it a little bit more fun.”
Pederson, meanwhile, said he was excited to tell his owner and general manager about his victory.
“Obviously they couldn’t believe it,” Pederson said. “But we had a great day, it was fun, it was exciting. And listen, when those competitive juices are flowing, he wanted to beat me and I wanted to beat him. That’s just the way it goes.”