It isn’t often that two of my favorite conversational topics these days — the global economic meltdown/ collapse of Wall Street and the Philadelphia Eagles — manage to find themselves in the same news item, but I guess Christmas came a little early for me.

The Madoff investment fraud, considered to be “the biggest Ponzi scheme in financial history,” has a long and distinguished list of victims, including former Eagles owner Norman Braman (also here if you don’t have a WSJ subscription):

New potential victims emerged of Wall Street veteran Bernard Madoff’s alleged giant Ponzi scheme, with international banks, hedge funds and wealthy private investors among those sorting out what could amount to tens of billions of dollars in losses.

New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon, GMAC Chairman J. Ezra Merkin and former Philadelphia Eagles owner Norman Braman were among the dozens of seemingly sophisticated investors who placed money on what could prove to be history’s largest financial scam.

I mean, it’s one thing to have the Mets get stung by this, but the Braman-man?  That’s glorious!  Now if we could only get Antonio Pierce involved as well.

Note that longtime Braman observers consider his decision to invest with Madoff to be only his second-worst financial/ management decision ever, narrowly edging his choice to sell the Eagles in 1994 (just prior to the boom in NFL franchise values) for the number-two slot (a deal on which Braman still managed to make money).

His worst decision ever remains the hiring of Rich Kotite.

(HT to Ben and Trish.)

So will Antonio Pierce sell out his boy in exchange for immunity?  Tough, tough call.  I mean, they are teammates and all that.  And it’s obvious they hang out.  But does Antonio Pierce want to get in trouble as well?  And not just fined-by-the-NFL trouble; this might be convicted-of-a-felony trouble.

These are some pretty serious questions, and I hope they weigh extremely heavily on Pierce’s mind, every minute from now until about 4:30 pm on Sunday.

(After that, I’m not really interested.)

If nothing else, Pierce’s role in an ongoing criminal investigation has at least kept his boastful piehole mostly closed this week.  And we’ll take that.

PFT is posting some naughty news regarding injured Eagles rookie Jack Ikegwuonu. There was apparently a photo posted to Ikegwuonu’s sister’s Facebook page that included Ikegwuonu and sundry drug paraphernalia.

Check out the photo here.

Florio has some opinions on the sister’s claims in re: Photoshop and details on the team’s response:

But we post the photo and identify the player with this disclaimer — the picture appeared on the Facebook page of his younger sister, and she has since claimed that she Photoshopped it. (An if it’s truly Photoshopped, then we should fire Taco Bill and hire her.)

We’re also told that the player is not in trouble with his team. (That said, another source said that the picture was taken down only after the team became aware of it.)

My questions and talking points:

1. Who is Florio’s source at the NovaCare complex? I can imagine Joe Banner sitting in his office, scheming a plan to catch this treasonist!

2. Is this true? What happens if it isn’t? Is Florio accountable somehow?

3. Will someone ask Andy Reid about this in the Friday presser?

4. A Facebook scandal? How very Web 2.0/ Tween of the Eagles!

In any case, the Eagles look like they have a little scandal brewing, and in the case of an Eagles player being involved, it has certainly been a while!

(At this point a scandal is actually preferred to more wallowing in the team’s pattern of failures. Bring it on.)