over for the birds. when the cowboys fell last week, many eagles fans flooded social media unable to contain their excitement. this morning sports legend explains the history behind our town's fierce sports rivalries with a few nuggets that might surprise you. fact check. nbc 10 has your back. we've partnered with fact check.org to as a result niz accuracy of our politicians. we'll help you separate fact from fiction out of washington. workout payday. your boss paying for your gym membership. your boss paying you when you work out, that's even better. we'll tell you about a local plan to make that happen.

>> announcer: "nbc 10 @issue" starts now. good morning, i'm erin coleman for "nbc 10 @issue." we begin with a topic discussed across the area, sports rivalries. specifically philadelphia sports rivalries. whether cowboys, penguins, mets, there are plenty of teams that philly loves to hate. the question is how did these rivalries start? this was the front page of philadelphia daily news after packers beat dallas. check that out. it reads cowboys' hearts broken by packers lol! that says it all when it comes to our lack of love for dallas. ray, pro football hall of famer and nbc preand postgame analyst, thanks for being here, ray. >> my pleasure. >> i'm a philly girl, born and raised in the area. i know all about the hate for the cowboys. where does it begin?

i feel like a lot of people don't know. where does this all start? >> a lot of people, you can point to, this you can point to that. i think it's actually 50 years ago this year, 1957, there's a game down in dallas where the eagles lone star at the time went out to catch a pass and one of the cowboys players leroy jordan hit him with as cheap a cheap shot as you can imagine and knocked out a bunch of timmy's teeth. that was kind of where it began. it was unnecessary. it was pure flat-out dirty play and the eagles took that personally. a couple years later one of the eagles knocked out roger staubach and it went back and forth, back and forth. i think it started 50 years ago at the cotton bowl and went from

there. >> 50 years we've loved to hate dallas. the giants, they are really close to us. why aren't they a bigger rival? >> new york giants? >> yeah. >> i think before the cowboys came along, the giants were the eagles big rival. again, it kind of revolves around a big hit. the big star of the eagles in 1960 actually knocked frankie gifford, the biggest star of the new york giants unconscious in yankee stadium, knocked frank gifford out of football for a year and a half. eagles on the way to the championship and they had to jump over giants to get there. that play happening in new york in front of the giants fans made the cover of life magazine. that was kind of -- if you talked about kind of the flash point, eagles giants, that was probably it. >> sounds like big hits were the starting points for a lot of these. >> yes, that would probably be true. the other thing about cowboys, after that period went through a

period of cowboys domination. cowboys beat eagles 21 out of 24 games, a lot of them very one-sided. a lot of them cowboys ran up the score to embarrass the eagles, many of those games in philadelphia. so it was a cumulative thing. then when cowboys called themselves america's team, that was certainly a bridge too far. >> what's your favorite moment in a rivalry between a philadelphia team? >> i think probably the 1980 nfc championship game when the eagles got to the championship game in philadelphia and their opponent was the cowboys. i mean, that was the perfect setup. it could have been anybody but it was the cowboys. the eagles got them here on a bitter cold day. that was the team the eagles wanted. that was the team they got. they pummeled the cowboys that day and went on their way to the first super bowl. >> let's move onto hockey. same deal with the very hated penguins.

is it because it's a pennsylvania thing? >> that may be part of it. i think because of both being in the same conference, same division since their inception that played a lot of big games, played in the postseason many times, this is almost specific to one player. i think it's a sydney crosby thing. the fans hate sydney crosby. he's reviled all around nhl. great player but his personality rubs people the wrong way. i think that has a lot to do with it. one of the interesting thing about flyers penguins is, have you a player that went from one team to the other, jaromir jagr. they hated him. they whistled when he got the puck because he had long hair. later on he came to play on the flyers.

why do some of them move from teams we love to hate. you talk about flyers, john got a standing ovation when he played in philly after moving to penguins or do we punish them thinking about desean jackson? >> it depends on the case. i think it's a case-by-case basis in some cases. eric lyndross, franchise player then went to eight abouter rival of flyers. when he came back, he certainly wasn't welcomed at all. >> let me ask you this. is our area unique? are we tougher on a lot of these teams? philadelphia fans are notorious, wherever you go, philadelphia fans, we can get kind of nasty. we stand behind our teams. what is that about? what makes us so unique? are we unique?

>> i think fans may be unique in that they take things more personally than other towns. really do. listen, there are a lot of rivalries around nfl, let's just say nfl. it's a bitter rivalry with bears and packers. that goes all the way back to 1920s those teams have been playing each other. there a real bitterness when those two play. that's real. denver and raiders don't like each other very much but philadelphia fans take it to a personal level. when dallas cowboys come to philadelphia to play, fans stand on the sidewalk and throw eggs at the bus. i don't think fans in other cities take it to quite that length. >> you think we're tougher on teams we don't like than other cities? >> i would say that's a fair statement. >> all right. how about the mets? let's move onto baseball. talk about that. how did that start? >> i think this one is more

geographic? i think it's a philly/new york thing. i think there's a natural friction. people don't want to admit it but a little bit of an inferiority complex. we feel like we're in the shadow of new york. they have had more success than philly teams over the years. i think it's that as much as anything. that was great delight in the 90s when new york mets looked like they were going to coast to the pennant and they began fumbling down the stretch and phillies beat them in the series and leapfrogged them and i know philadelphia fans enjoyed that. >> historically sixers biggest rival, about larry bird and dr. j? >> no, no, no. >> bigger than that? >> way back, well before your time. it goes back to wilt chamberlain

and bill russell. in that time, period of late '50s and '60s, two dominant teams in pro basketball were philadelphia and boston and great teams. each one had a great center, legendary center in bill russell and wilt chamberlain and they would play head-to-head all season. that's a rivalry that people still talk about even now was russell chamberlain. that was where the philly boston basketball thing began. then it moved on through time and we later on had larry bird, dr. j and great postseason between those teams. let's face it sixers haven't been that competitive and celtics haven't been that great either, so it's not what it used to be but there's great history there. >> finally college. we talked about professional, let's talk college wars,

villanova, st. joe's. they get a the the lot of national press. why is that so unique? >> that's easy to explain. two catholic schools that are five-minute drive apart, really. i think it's just that. they practically have one foot on each other's campus. there's great history there. both those teams have had great players and part of the big five. there are great rivalries in the big five. all schools. great rivalries among all schools. what i remember when the big five was at its peak in the '60s, a beautiful they think about those double headers, the st. joe's fan debate like villanova but you go there for big five double-header, they would come early and watch lasalle playing duquesne. they would all root for each other except when they played each other. >> thanks for being with us.

i learned a lot. separating fact from fiction in washington. it's not easy but nbc 10 has your back. we'll explain how next. dear fellow citizen, i know what it's like to worry about student loan debt. i graduated into it. so i couldn't do the things i love, like traveling. but i knew there had to be a way to manage it.

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and welcome back to "nbc 10 @issue." to call the currently political climate volatile is an understatement. right now bad information, false information and exaggerating circulating on social media and various other sources. that is why nbc 10 and factcheck.org decided it was more important than ever to continue the partnership we started during the elections. factcheck.org is a nonpartisan project of the annenberg public policy center of university of pennsylvania. it monitors accuracy of major political figures and researchers, statements and claims made by politicians. if they exaggerate, misrepresent

or misinterpret or just plain lie, factcheck.org sets the record straight. joining us, journalist who covered politics for 30 years now. eugene, thanks for being with us. you were very busy during the presidential campaign. what was different about fact checking this time around? >> wow, there was a lot different. first of all we are dealing with an open seat. barack obama stepping down. both parties had a very vigorous primary. hillary clinton didn't expect to have one with bernie sanders but she did. to get the number, the high teens, the number of candidates running on the republican side. so we were very busy with two very busy primaries. that didn't get us to the general election. once we got there, it was insane because you had a democratic nominee under investigation by the fbi and a republican nominee

who had never run for office before and has a penchant for exaggeration. >> how would you compare it to past presidential races just in terms of the volume you had? >> i'll tell you, it was very, very busy. nothing that i have ever experienced before. >> we've heard a lot about this so-called fake news. it's a phrase we keep hearing. the first news conference since the election, president-elect trump accused a major news organization of being fake, reporting fake news. tell us why there is no disputing what you guys do at factcheck.org. >> what we do at factcheck.org, you can go on our website and see what our process is. what we're doing is looking for claims made by a major political figure that are based in fact. if someone is expressing an opinion, we're not going to challenge that. everyone has a right to their

opinion. but what we're looking for is information that is based in fact to check to see if they are, indeed, accurate and post a story if we find facts used are misleading or just outright false. >> again, we should stress this is a nonpartisan group. >> yes. based in university of pennsylvania, been around since 2003. our track record is pretty good. >> you'll be talking to nbc 10 about your findings. so what can we expect? what topic will generate the most conflicting information or misrepresentation of facts? >> excited we're doing this with nbc. we did it during the election. we did it during the election in 2012 as well. this time we're going to be doing it in a nonelection year. it's not like politicians just start telling the truth after they get elected. so this is going to be a particularly busy congress. we're dealing with immigration

reform, tax reform in an overhaul of the health care system. already we're seeing a lot of false claims on both sides about the affordable care act as congress starts to move towards repealing it. >> let's talk about some of the most recent research you've been working on starting with obama whoppers. talk to us about that? >> what we did here in the run-up to the inauguration is take a look back at eight years, because we've covered him for all of the eight years, been around since 2003. so we looked at the claims that the president has made for the last eight years we've written about. there were some ones that were well-known to the public by now. one perhaps most well-known being the claim that if you like your health care plan you can keep it, which was a claim he was making and we wrote about in 2009 and repeatedly after that

in 2010, '11, '12 as the affordable care act went into place that wasn't true. some plans were canceled because they weren't meeting the standards of the affordable care act and he apologized. we've looked back into those kinds of things. >> you've also looked into what president trump inherits. >> yes. that's something that takes a look at what the situation was when president obama took over in 2009 and what it is now. looking at things like the unemployment rate or the number of job openings, things like that. so what we're seeing is that the economy is a lot better than it was obviously when obama took over. he took over at a time when the great recession was just winding down. but there's still problems in the system? >> and spinning the russian report. talk about what you guys have done about that?

>> there's been a lot written about this. donald trump is concerned about being labeled an illegitimate president as representative john lewis has done. so he's pushing back and his camp is pushing back on the claim by the cia, the fbi, and all the other intelligence agencies that russia was involved in an influence campaign to try to influence the 2016 presidential election to help donald trump. so what we did was take a look at what trump campaign and what the president is saying about this report that was issued and how that squares with the fact. finding they are spinning it in a way that makes it -- putting words in the mouth of james c m clapper, who is director of national intelligence and saying things that are not really in the report. >> all right. eugene, thank you so much for

being here with us. >> thanks for having me. >> next on "nbc 10 @issue," getting your health plan to pay for your gym membership is so yesterday. now, maybe be able to get paid when you show up to the gym. we'll tell you how next.

>> announcer: this is "nbc 10 @issue." a local company is connecting area employers with gyms as a way to boost their workers' fitness. it's an idea that's been around a while now but they are taking it one step further. paying employees to hit the gym. joining me, president and ceo of global fit. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> come on now, real money to work out. >> as you mentioned, we've been around for sometime. our technology actually plugs directly into your wearable device like a fitbit, and it tracks your activity and directly reimburses you for hitting certain milestones.

>> why do you think this is going to work in what's the research behind it? what's that say? >> folks used to get free gym memberships and we did not know what individuals were actually doing at the gym. now we can actually track their activity. by tracking activity, we can actually remove the needle in reducing chronic disease in this country. that is preventible diseases like heart disease, type 2 diabetes and even some forms of cancer. >> what kind of support do employees get once they show up to the gym. this the time january when a lot of people made those new year's resolutions. but keeping them in there and getting that support, it's important. >> so we track their progress and help motivate them and there's really dollars involved in this. a normal employer or health insurer will provide hundreds of dpla dollars of incentives. we've seen it as high as $1500 annually. >> what's the motivation of employers? sounds like it could cost the

employer extra money? >> but fit and healthy employees are more productive. they have lower rates of absenteeism. by driving healthier workforce into your organization you can reduce how much you have to pay as an organization to in sure them. >> what happens if there are no results. like somebody falls off the wagon. are you kicked out of the program? how does that work out? >> what we do is set a baseline that's both challenging and achievable, at around 5500 steps, for example. so folks that are very thick can achieve that and folks that need help can get there. we can slowly ramp that up so we continually increase the health and wellness of an employee population. >> interesting stuff. thanks for being here with us. >> all right. >> all right. why protesters took a stand by taking a seat. how it all ended. that's next.

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>> announcer: this is "nbc 10 @issue." >> the wall in rittenhouse square was a hot topic last week when people were told to stay off. after backlash from the community, that all changed. a planned protest over the wall sitting ban actually turned out to be more of a victory celebration. philadelphia's parks and rec department put four "no sitting" signs up in the square. now those signs are gone. city officials say vandalism and structural concerns were the reason signs went up in the first place. parkgoers gathered to send a message, don't put restrictions on public space. >> i mean, i came out to support the park, people's ability to use the park and not have it legislated for us. >> a spokesperson said they are working on a plan to deal with any concerns about normal care and maintenance. that is all for this edition of "nbc 10 @issue." thanks for watching.

join me again tomorrow and every weekend for nbc 10 news. enjoy your sunday. dear fellow citizen, i know what it's like to worry about student loan debt. i graduated into it. so i couldn't do the things i love, like traveling. but i knew there had to be a way to manage it. citizens bank education refinance loan. call... an education refinance loan helped me save on payments each month. if you have a question about whether refinancing is right for you, ask me. sincerely, robert kennedy, fellow grad and fellow citizen. call... to refi now.

know you're watching television thats educational and informational. the more you know on nbc. lauren: hi, i'm lauren thompson and heart of a champion starts right now. today, see how one group of military veterans are finding therapy and camaraderie through the sport of hockey. andrew: we are able to normalize; something that is very difficult to do when you leave the military and come in to a society that doesn't understand what you've been through. lauren: then take a high octane ride with mary carillo down a different kind of racetrack. mary: i mean are these people daredevils or are they just madmen? sir brian: all of the above. lauren: and when american skier julia mancuso isn't racking up olympic medals she's hanging ten in hawaii. julia: i just love being able to express myself in nature, and that's one thing that my coaches know about me. they'll say "wow, you're getting slower today, i