whoa…my (formerly) crummy home team just made it into the Superbowl!
Yes, it’s official: Hell has frozen over, and my Arizona Cardinals are actually going to the Superbowl! (Did you hear me at the NFC Championship Game in Phoenix last Sunday? I was the guy in Section 241 going “Woooo!” really loud.)
For all of you OUTSIDE the state who are surprised that the Cardinals won the NFC Championship…just imagine how shocked & stunned those of us INSIDE the state are!
Up until 3 weeks ago when they began their string of playoff wins, being a Cardinals fan was an exercise in Humility…Futility…and the Cruel Practical-Jokes that Fate and the Football Gods sometimes play on mortals. (Exhibit A: the infamous 2006 Monday Night game in which the Cardinals went 57 minutes of the way toward pulling the upset of the century against the Chicago Bears…then suddenly turned into a last-place Pop Warner team the final 3 minutes and gave back a 20-point lead!)
Up until 3 weeks ago, rooting for the Cardinals was like rooting for the Washington Generals over the Harlem Globetrotters; the Coyote over the Roadrunner; like always voting for the Libertarian presidential candidate, or worse, Ralph Nader!
Their last NFL Championship, as the Chicago Cardinals way back in 1947, leaves them with the 2nd longest drought in all of Pro Sports, behind only the (far more respected) Chicago Cubs. And the only other Cardinals title, in 1925, is still shrouded in controversy, with many believing that year’s crown rightfully belongs to a long-defunct team with the cartoonish name, “the Pottsville Maroons“ (?!!).
After they moved to St. Louis in 1960, they became “the football Cardinals,” so as to differentiate them as the ugly hidden-in-the-attic stepsister to the REAL Cardinals of baseball legend & lore. Such was the impression the team left on that city that, a few decades later, when they sprung the customary NFL-Owner’s Ultimatum (”New Stadium, or we’re Leaving”), the predominant response was…”Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!”
So, in 1988, the team snuck out of St. Louis in broad daylight and moved to Phoenix, its 3rd city (or is it 4th? 5th? Who knows for sure, when they attract such little attention). For years, The chief preoccupation of local fans & sports media was coming up with exactly the right medical term to pair them up with, to describe their sickliness: “Cardiac Cardinals”? “Comatose Cardinals”? For their entire time playing at Sun Devil Stadium, Cardinals fans were routinely outnumbered by those cheering on the visiting team; in fact, some teams - most notably, the Dallas Cowboys - considered the trip to Tempe their (all-but-technically) “9th Home Game” of the year! Before this season’s success, the primary function of the Arizona Cardinals had become: “Team of Last Resort for Future Hall-of-Fame Players & Coaches Too Proud to Admit When their Active Careers are Over!”
But that’s all forgotten now: we’re going to the Superbowl! Just in time to see the face value on Superbowl tickets go over $1,000 for the first time. Lucky us.