PHILADELPHIA — The Eagles are parting ways with their pep band, the group of musicians who serenade the stadium on Sundays and helped make “Fly, Eagles Fly” the unofficial anthem of Philadelphia. The band started in 1996 and traveled with the team last month to New Orleans for the Super Bowl. They were stunned to learn Wednesday morning that they were finished.

“We’re not bitter,” said Bobby Mansure, who co-founded the Eagles Pep Band. “It’s been glorious. Super Bowls and being on the field and meeting families and players and friends. We walk away with a smile on our face.”

The Eagles, as reported by CBS 3, have decided to evolve their in-stadium entertainment. The team now has a DJ at every home game. The Eagles Pep Band will be let go in early April, so it will play an already contracted gig for the Eagles on Thursday morning in Montgomery County.

The band regularly makes appearances throughout the region, playing its version of “Fly, Eagles Fly” at weddings, parades and other functions. The band performs at tailgates before kickoff and sings the song on the field before home games. It is played after every touchdown at Lincoln Financial Field. The song was played minutes after the Eagles won their second Super Bowl as Birds fans who took over the Superdome sang along. It’s a song the Eagles Pep Band helped create.

The Eagles hired the band in 1996 to play music in the parking lot of Veterans Stadium. Mansure, Brian Saunders and Anthony “Skull” DiMeo wore Ricky Watters jerseys and called themselves “The Fly Guys.” The team gave them an old tape of “The Eagles Victory Song,” which was written in 1957 by Charles Borelli and Roger Courtland, two Philadelphia advertising men.

The lyrics — “Fight, Eagles, fight on your way to victory,” it began — were printed in the team’s programs at Connie Mack Stadium and the song was performed by the Sound of Brass, a marching band the Eagles introduced in the 1960s. But the original “Victory Song” failed to resonate and eventually faded away.

The Fly Guys upped the song’s tempo and wrote the now iconic phrase “Fly, Eagles Fly,” which was not in the original song. They changed about 20% of the words, swapped out “on your way to victory” for “on the road to victory,” and transformed the old tune into a sing-along.

“When I put those words in ‘Fly, Eagles Fly,’ it fit like a glove,” Saunders said. “It was perfect. I wanted the masses to sing it.”

The Fly Guys soon became the Eagles Pep Band, ditched the Watters jerseys, and took their tune back to the parking lots.

“We handed out pieces of paper to every tailgate we went to,” Mansure said. “We sold it to the parking lots. Instead of parading through, we stopped at tailgates and talked to people. We got phone numbers. We just connected with people and soon they were like, ‘Can you show up to our tailgate?’ ”

The song caught on just as the Eagles returned to prominence under Andy Reid. The 33-second song — simple enough that a toddler can learn the words — became an anthem for Philadelphians. It’s hard to imagine that the Eagles ever scored touchdowns that weren’t followed by the fight song. It became part of the Sunday experience.

Next season, the song will still be played after Eagles touchdowns, but the band that helped coin it won’t be there to perform it.

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