After all, in a sports world filled with riotous crowds, screaming coaches, loudmouth jocks and blathering media (where the rule seems to be the less you know THE LOUDER YOU SHOUT) silence has become far more telling -- and much harder to come by -- than ear-piercing noise.

Deafening silence. Eerie silence. Shocking silence.

	The only noise at the Vet came from the Bucs' locker room.

You know, like the kind that seemed to unplug the Vet last night when Bucs corner Ronde Barber picked off Donovan McNabb and the Eagles' dream season and raced 92 yards -- all the way to San Diego. As Barber sprang untouched down the sidelines, I'm telling you, it was as if the entire stadium was suddenly underwater.

They were in such shock here, Iggles fans couldn't even muster a boo. It's normally so loud in the Vet that your ears ring with KEYSHAWN SUCKS chants for a week after the game and the press box bounces along with the beat from the stands. Not this night. This night the Bucs had pressed the mute button.

What did it sound like when Adam Vinatieri's kick was floating through the uprights in New Orleans? What did it sound like during Denver's Drive in Cleveland? (By the way, there was nothing John Elway enjoyed more than going into a hostile stadium and shutting up the fans.) I'll bet it sounded a lot like the Vet last night -- where the mighty Eagles played like turkeys and the scary rats that inhabit this place all turned to mice.

"It was like someone dropped a bomb on the place," said Bucs safety John Lynch. "I've never experienced anything like that. It was so eerie. So quiet. I thought for sure a flag had been thrown. We all just looked around and enjoyed the silence of the moment."

Lynch smiled, readjusted his giant white NFC Champions T-shirt and soaked in the wild scene. In the NFL silence isn't golden, it's silver-plated. Just like that keepsake from Tiffany's someone will raise up over their heads this Sunday.

Behind Lynch, Bryan Glazer was hugging the conference trophy like it was a teddy bear. On the other side of the locker room, Warren Sapp, his right eye cut and swollen like Rocky (gosh, the win was so dominant the Bucs even commandeered this town's folk heroes) was hollering that if Jon Gruden asked him to jump off the Walt Whitman bridge, doggonit, he would do it. (Come on, Jon, what do you say? How 'bout sometime before Super Bowl media day?)

Next to Lynch was GM Rich McKay who was saying that the feeling he was experiencing was not elation or an urge to pound his chest, but "relief."

A few lockers down was Barber, explaining how the Bucs have become so good at tricking QBs into making throws by bluffing blitz in the Cover Two defense. Corners can really sell the fake, you see, because in CT a safety will always be behind them in coverage if they don't get back into position.

And nearby a gleaming, red-faced Gruden recalled how he had spent the better part of three years "living under the Vet" earning his stripes as a Philly assistant coach.

Lynch drank it all in. "The sweet sound of silence," he continued. "What a way to send off the Vet. Total stunned silence."

Words that also could have described the Eagles' postgame locker room. Groomed for the Super Bowl from a precise four-year blueprint created by president Joe Banner and coach Andy Reid, somehow, in the biggest game this franchise has seen in more than two decades, the team played flat. "We were kind of unnerved," admitted linebacker Levon Kirkland. "Flustered even."

He had four microphones in front of him at his press conference, but still it was hard to hear Reid. He seemed stuck in quicksand. The defense was slow and confused. McNabb, a smooth prime time player if there ever was one, was robotic and predictable. He never looked off a receiver all day, instead telegraphing his passes by staring down his intended target, until Barber finally made him pay.

"I see them and I think, they're wearing our [championship] hats," said Philly corner Troy Vincent. "They all sting but this one will hurt a little more. The team was ready. The atmosphere was right. The city was ready. The fans were ready. The stage was set. The makeup, the chemistry of this team will change. At some point the window of opportunity closes."

Just like the Vet, I suppose.

On the field after the game, I walked across the faded NFL playoffs logo. I saw a used black mouthpiece, an empty Advil packet, a can of Coors and, over on the Philly sideline, a used-up packet of smelling salts. Someone had cracked that thing open, desperately trying to wake up a player, a team, an entire city perhaps.

Meanwhile, underneath the stadium, Gruden was walking down the very same cold, beer-soaked cement hallways where he used to sleep during the season. Only this time he wasn't a young, relatively unknown coach. This time he was flanked by eight police officers as well as team security and PR personnel. Coming the other way, a little while after Gruden, was Eagles offensive coordinator Brad Childress ... all by his lonesome.

"This place is a historical landmark," said Gruden. "I'll always love the Vet, that's for sure. I will always remember this place."

And this place will never forget you, Jon -- the man who closed it down with the most amazing, rare sound.

Silence.

David Fleming is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at FlemFile@carolina.rr.com.