I Don't Love the Cardinals, But I'd Love to Cover Them

I am not a fan of the Arizona Cardinals. I never have been. In fact, I have been disowning the team from my home state for most of my adult life. I read the headlines and watch the games (when televised), but they’ve never felt like my team. They’ve always been the professional football team that plays half of its games in my city.

Surprisingly, it’s been easy to take this indifferent approach to my hometown team. Unlike my loyalty to the Phoenix Suns and more recently the Arizona Diamondbacks, my relationship with the NFL and its teams has been a dedicated yet somewhat objective and mostly non-partisan following.

I’ve always said that it is a culture of losing. One that has been ingrained in the franchise for most of its entire existence by egregious mismanagement by the franchise's owners, the Bidwell family.

They’ve always been that deadbeat step-cousin at family gatherings that you acknowledge and make small talk with but know that despite his new job at the pizza joint, finally getting his GED, and filling out the applications for community college, you know that it’s going to blow up in his face like all of his past steps in the right direction.

Every time the Cardinals finished the season over .500 or beat the Cowboys there’d be talk of righting the ship. Jake Plummer, Buddy Ryan, Jim McMahon, Dennis Green all had promise, showed potential, got some people excited, then crashed and burned.

On the other hand, the franchise’s most recent moves are proving beneficial, as is undeniably evident in this last season’s Super Bowl run. It seems like the Bidwells are finally getting things right, trying to change the flawed core by hiring head coach Ken Whisenhunt, strengthening the ever-weak offensive line, and establishing some semblance of a running game instead of adding a bunch of bells and whistles to distract the fan from the stench of the product.

Still, I recall the 2006 Monday Night Football game against the then-undefeated Chicago Bears in which the Cardinals squandered a 20-0 halftime-lead on their home-field. It was a microcosm of the franchise’s existence.

They were positioned to make a big splash in front of a national audience, with a new stadium, a new logo, new uniforms, and a new quarterback. They had arguably the best team in the league on the ropes and instead of knocking the heavyweight out, they shot themselves in the foot, cementing the culture-of-losing label they’d been trying to shed.

I subscribe to the idea of lighting the sinking ship on fire rather than letting it slowly and noticeably submerge with little more than a ripple.

That is why I would love to cover the Cardinals, especially during the pivotal 2009-2010 season. Their hot-and-cold method of operation makes following them captivating, interesting, and entertaining.

Can the team ride the momentum of the spectacular previous season, make another run for a title, and cure the illness that’s been infecting the franchise for decades? Or will they implode, back away from the challenge, and fan the flames of the previously (but seemingly ever-present) burning and sinking ship?

I can’t wait to find out.