Why I've Stuck With The Arizona Cardinals All These Years

When I was growing up in Arizona in the mid 1990s, there were only two sports teams to root for: the Phoenix Suns and the Arizona Cardinals.

One was lead by the likes of Sir Charles Barkley and Jason Kidd to playoff berths and NBA stardom (of course until each of them left the Suns for the Houston Rockets and New Jersey Nets, respectively). The other team, well, sucked.

Yes, the Arizona Cardinals sucked throughout most of the franchise’s history in the NFL. But they were my losers, our failures, and for a short time even the retirement home for the NFL. 

Of course I am making reference to Boomer Esiason, former New York Jets quarterback and barbecue sauce entrepreneur who made my dad’s New York Giants cry one day in an odd winter-like Arizona in 1996, had a decent season with the ‘Cards and then moved on back to Cincinnati to walk into the forest like an old Indian warrior, or become a football commentator on CBS (Which is by far my favorite station to watch sports on, CBS or nothing I say).

We jump started the career of Jake “The Snake” Plummer while hating every minute of it, and we lost American hero Pat Tillman in the mountains of Afghanistan.  

I sat through long, sunny days in Sun Devils Stadium—my pasty Irish-American skin burning like bacon in a frying pan—watching the Broncos of John Elway run house on the Cardinals.

I had a flag football coach who used to tell me the best part of going to Cardinal games were to just laugh at them—they were that bad. But I loved them for being that.

Why did I like watching the laughing stock of (at the time) the NFC East? Because it meant quality time with my father, my grandfather, and my uncle every time the Giants came to town.

It meant long conversations with my grandfather about the history of the Giants, but more importantly the Cardinals—the move from Chicago to St. Louis and most recently in 1988 to Arizona. The move from the East Coast and how they still played as a part of the NFC East (when the NFC East wasn’t the powerhouse it is today).

With those talks I got insight into football history for the first time and still got quality time with the boys in the family—something I haven’t been able to do since. A move to upstate New York, where three teams reign supreme and finding tickets to a game are harder than finding a hit man in the yellow pages.

When I moved to New York, I still rooted for the Cardinals, but I knew if I told anyone I’d be ostracized until the day I graduated high school. So like a monk in a 1960s British spy movie, I quietly followed them while pretending to root for the Giants/Bills/Jets (depending on which of my friend's houses I was at that weekend).

Even in my senior year of college in New Hampshire, I stayed quiet as my friends lamented the injuries of Tom Brady and the “pitfalls” of Matt Cassel. I hated the Patriots, they knew that, but I never let them know who I really rooted for.

They always wondered why the constant berating of Eli Manning never made me angry—probably because I was too fed up watching Kurt Warner get pounded by the Patriots' defense the week before to exert any energy on the matter.

There is something to be said for rooting for an underdog—and believe me, the Cardinals are the definition of that on many levels. It gives you a backbone, it gives you pride to stand up for a team that gets knocked to the ground on multiple occasions only to get back up and fight again.

I liked watching them struggle because I knew that when they finally got the big win, it would mean more to me than to, say, a Steelers fan, who had seen win after miraculous win every year.

My dad had always said it wasn’t all about winning, it was about the journey there and it was about having fun on the field. The Arizona Cardinals helped cement that feeling in me. I don’t know if they like losing, actually I’m sure they hate it—especially the loss to the Steelers this past January—but they got right back up again, took their draft picks and are currently getting ready for this season.

Well not Anquan Boldin or Darnell Dockett because of contract issues, but hey, the rest of the team is getting there.

And if there is anything I have learned from watching and rooting for the Cardinals is that every loss, every injury, and every-hard fought win could have been worse.

I could be a Browns fan.