There might be a few extra cheers for the underdog when the residents of Toronto’s Good Shepherd men’s homeless shelter settle in for their Super Bowl party.

In the downtown shelter, in the midst of a brutal winter, a lot of the men here have reason to cheer for the scrappy team from Philadelphia with a starting quarterback who was nearly rejected by the sport, says Andre, 44, a temporary resident and volunteer.

“A lot of guys here share that context,” said Andre, part of the Good Shepherd’s Drug and Alcohol Recovery Enrichment (DARE) Program. (He asked that his last name not be used.)

“These are guys who are living on the street or guys who are working hard to get back to life. That piece of it resonates with them,” he said.

The Sunday night football party is a repeat of last year’s inaugural event, when 80 men gathered in the Good Shepherd dining room, with a large screen TV rental and dinner donated by Pizza Pizza.

“It really lifted their spirits,” said Brother Tim Liss, Good Shepherd’s director. “For about a week after, they seemed more content.”

It’s a lonely life, but the Super Bowl party helped, Liss said, by connecting people through sport. “When the game is on you get the guys cheering for their favourite team and bantering back and forth. And then they get into the statistics and analysis of the players. The interaction is much, much greater.”

The DARE program has 25 men, while another 70 or so are homeless, staying in the shelter, which is almost always full, Liss said.

Andre will be at the party, helping serve pizza and later, he’ll help clean up. The DARE program that he’s enrolled in helps men prepare for rehabilitation while they wait for an outside spot to open.

He’s not making a prediction on whether the New England Patriots will be the golden boys — once again — or if the Philadelphia Eagles will prevail, despite all odds.

Andre does make the observation that the Patriots, whose home territory includes Harvard University and Martha’s Vineyard, are more akin to the Toronto guy “who works on the 75th floor of Scotia Bank Tower.” The Eagles, Andre says, represent “the guy working at a hot dog stand, the blue-collar worker.”

“There’s nothing wrong with working in Scotia Tower but there’s also nothing wrong with being the guy who’s working a day-to-day job.”

He also sees parallels in the experience of Eagles’ starting quarterback, Nick Foles, who at one point publicly said that he was so dejected with the game that he wanted to retire.

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“Now, he wound up starting this game,” Andre said.

“Guys here at the Shepherd can say here’s a guy who was almost on his way out. But there’s always hope. Hope is one of the best things in life. Sometimes, it’s the only thing.”