We Have A Team, HERE!

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I find sports and the culture of it's professionalism incredibly entertaining. So considering the monumental breakthrough my home state Arizona Football Cardinals have achieved by making the Super Bowl, I'd like to take the time to put a few words together on what this really means coming from a young Arizona native. For history's sake, many people are not aware that the Cardinals football franchise is the oldest of all pro-football teams. 90 years (yes, 90) before the Cardinals wound up in the desert, it's inception began in Chicago! In 1960, the Cardinals were forced to leave Chicago because apparently the town was only big enough for one football team, the Bears. That year St. Louis was the chosen city to accommodate 28 years of mediocre Cardinal football. Due to very low attendance and an outdated stadium, the owner of the Cardinals was faced with an ultimatum to either build a new stadium in St. Louis or move to either Baltimore, Jacksonville, or Phoenix. As you know now, the owner said peace to St. Louis and relocated the Cards to Arizona.


I was born and raised in Tucson and grew up very close to my extended family, most of whom did a similar migration to Tucson from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My family brought with them cheese-head paraphernalia and extremely devout Green Bay Packer fan-hood. My current love for the Packers came from their intense evangelism of all nostalgic feelings they had for what was left behind in Wisconsin. To be completely honest, the Cardinals was always an afterthought in Arizona. Out of all the pro sports teams in Arizona, the Cardinals seemed like the uninspired, underachieved, forgotten, adopted step-child. It's sad but true, since 1988 the Cards have averaged 5.7 wins per season, making the playoffs only once before this year.

I remember some years ago when the Arizona Daily Star launched a polling campaign to find out exactly what is Tucson's true NFL team. What resulted wasn't surprising given the fact many AZ residents are Midwestern & Californian transplants. I remember the Dallas Cowboys, Green Bay Packers, Denver Broncos, San Diego Chargers all topped that polling list. The AZ Star then covered the Cowboys as if they were the local team, and after a short while the experiment was dropped because they whole thing was so absurd. We're not Idaho or Montana, we have a local NFL team who happens to represent the whole Grand Canyon State.

About 3 years ago I went to my first NFL game, Green Bay Packers vs. Arizona Cardinals. My cousin & I drove up to Tempe and the Sun Devil Stadium/human-oven in horrible September weather and watched the Green Bay LOSE to Arizona in front of a crowd that was, no-joke, 50% Packer fans and 50% Cardinal fans. The stadium wasn't even full. I remember it made me more upset than Green Bay losing, and yet I was one to blame!

The Cardinals just weren't cool in a rented stadium and sporting that bizarre bird-head logo. Does that kind of bird even exist in Arizona? Probably not. I know these types of things transcend the game itself but I think it matters! The truth is if it wasn't for the people of Phoenix voting to fund the construction of a new stadium for the Cardinals, the Cardinals would have been in another city - most likely Los Angeles.



Bold moves were made by the Cards as they built an impressive & true modern masterpiece out of University Of Phoenix Stadium. They tastefully updated the Cardinal logo, so now the bird-head has a look of determination instead of confusion. And most importantly, they drafted good players and implemented quality coaching. Now for the first time, Super Bowl and Arizona Cardinals are in the same sentence and it's really really exciting. It's a freaking trip.

As for predictions, I don't want to go overboard or jump on the bandwagon so hard that it tips over, but I think the Cardinals have a legitimate chance! So here it is: Arizona 28, Pittsburgh 23.