Philadelphia Eagles references pepper the last two Star Wars movies

There’s not a whole lot of sporting action in “Star Wars” movies outside of pod racing, which is like NASCAR except they let nine-year-olds race. But if you listen closely, you can hear references to Philadelphia’s favorite NFL team dotted throughout, courtesy of sound engineer and Eagles fan David Acord.

Turns out Acord is quite the Eagles fan, having grown up in Philadelphia, and now that he’s in charge of certain soundscapes for Lucasfilm, home of your favorite space opera flicks, he’s been tucking references to the team throughout the most recent entries in the franchise.

For instance, listen closely to this scene in “The Force Awakens,” and you can hear the alien wheeler-dealer speak words that sound like (Brent) “Celek” and “Fletcher” (Cox), starting around the 25-second mark:

And then there’s Rogue One, a tale about a band of misfits who sacrifice everything to try to halt an unstoppable, soulless, relentless killing machine. (Gosh, that doesn’t sound like today’s NFL at all.) Anyway, at one point, our heroes are wandering through a crowded cityscape, and in the background you can hear a prayer chant. That, apparently, is the Eagles’ theme song “Fly Eagles Fly,” translated into Esperanto and chanted. Listen closely:

That’s pretty cool all the way around. Acord is also a sound engineer on “Guardians of the Galaxy 2,” opening this weekend, so if a character suddenly starts saying “I. Am. Wentz,” you’ll know where it came from.

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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports and the author of EARNHARDT NATION, on sale now at Amazon or wherever books are sold. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.