Life As a Cardinals Fan: Bidwells, Blackouts and Bowties

When it comes to sports, my tastes have always been a little different.

Nothing thrills me more than watching a road team pull out a win at the last second.

Even before the whole steroids scandal struck baseball, and even now, I’ve always preferred the arrogance of Barry Bonds over the happy-go-lucky Ken Griffey Jr.

Kobe or Lebron? Not even close. I want the ball in the hands of the “black mamba” any day of the week.

I readily admit: I march to the beat of my own drum.

That’s why I’ve always been an Arizona Cardinals fan.  

Growing up in Arizona, this was always more of the exception than the rule. Most people became fair-weather fans of the Dallas Cowboys. Why root for the lowly Cardinals when you could root for the success and tradition of “America’s Team”?

Last season’s success was especially rewarding for the fans who have stood by this franchise all these years even when every conceivable measure of logic told us we were wasting our time.

I guarantee you this: anybody who’s grown up rooting for the Cardinals was not in the least bit shocked that they came within an eyelash of winning the Super Bowl but still somehow ended up losing.

I guess I was pretty lucky. My favorite basketball team, the Suns, and my favorite baseball team, the San Francisco Giants, enjoyed pretty good runs of success in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s (though, sadly, neither won a championship). The Cardinals were my comic relief. I always rooted for them to win, but to me they were like a protagonist in a Shakespearean tragedy: flawed (extremely) but somehow admirable.

Watching games at Sun Devil Stadium required not only a lot of sun screen but an element of mental toughness that fans of most teams just don't understand. It was always unbearably hot, fans of the opponents usually out-numbered fans of the Cardinals, and you always left scratching your head, wondering if what you had just seen was real, or just a really bad nightmare.

In their last year at Sun Devil Stadium, I went to a Cardinals-Rams game. The Cardinals wound up losing the game, 17-12, after a 76-yard drive with under two minutes remaining was negated by a Leonard Davis false start penalty with 7 seconds left, which resulted in a 10-second run-off and the end of the game. I've never seen more trash thrown on the field simultaneously.

I learned long ago that being a Cardinals fan means having a dark, self-deprecating sense of humor.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking they don’t have traditions. They most certainly do.

There’s the tradition of losing (Three simple words: Monday Night Meltdown); the tradition of making fun of Bill Bidwell and his fondness for bowties; and the tradition of the blackouts (At Sun Devil Stadium, the only time games were sold out and thus on local television were when the Cowboys or Steelers were in town. Even the first home playoff game in Arizona history last year against the Falcons needed an extension from the league to avoid being blacked out.).  

My personal favorite tradition, though, is the tradition of the ridiculous quotes.

Ah, the quotes.

Remember when Buddy Ryan was hired as the team’s head coach and said, “You’ve got a winner in town!”

Maybe he was being sarcastic. The Cardinals went 12-20 in his two seasons here and missed the playoffs both times.

What about when Simeon Rice called Arizona “the armpit” of the NFL.

That one kind of explains itself.

And of course, who could forget Dennis Green’s rant after his Cardinals blew a 20-point lead in the third quarter during a Monday Night Football game against the Bears (the aforementioned Monday Night Meltdown).

“The Bears are who we thought they were!” Green said as he slammed his fists against the podium. “That’s why we took the damn field. If you want to crown them, just crown their ass. They are who we though they were and we let them off the hook!”    

But times have changed. The Cardinals of the Ken Whisenhunt era are not my childhood’s Cardinals. They are talented, confident, and full of potential. Optimism reigns supreme, and the sky is the limit for this year’s team.

One thing I know for sure about this season is it won't be dull. Nothing about the Cardinals ever is.

I can only hope that when all is said and done I can say this year’s team is what I thought it’d be.