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ASFN Addict
Stadium a Breath of Cool Air
By Les Carpenter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 10, 2006; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/09/AR2006090900762.html
GLENDALE, Ariz. -- Across the valley of the stucco and tile, where suburbs seem to bloom with each rise of the sun, soars a new kind of building. It is an ethereal sight, a great silver mushroom that looks as if it has sprouted from the desert floor.
Already, the best architectural minds have journeyed here to see Cardinals Stadium, to touch its smooth aluminum skin, watch the huge translucent roof open and close and see the 403-foot long, grass-covered tray that is the field slip outside into the parking lot "like a cake pan coming out of the oven," as Cardinals Vice President Michael Bidwill likes to say. They luxuriated in the 63,400 seats and lounged in the suites officially named "luxury lofts." When they were through, they pronounced the building one of the remarkable architectural feats of our time.
But it is a 20th-century innovation that Sunday brings the Cardinals their first Week 1 home game since they moved to Arizona from St. Louis.
Air conditioning.
"Air conditioning has made a big difference in terms our fans coming back," Bidwill said. "They didn't want to sit out there when it was 100-something degrees out on those metal bleachers."
Air conditioning has changed everything, bringing a season of sellouts to a team that hasn't seen a full house in six years. It has brought hope to a city that long ago gave up on professional football and, most important, it has brought piles of money to a team that had been left behind in the NFL's financial boom.
This, in turn, delivered to the Cardinals the best player in free agency last winter, running back Edgerrin James. In the locker room last week, James smiled and began to shout. "This is the perfect place to be!" he said. "In the end a lot of people will think I have a great vision for coming here. They're serious about winning."
To understand how a air conditioning can save an NFL team, you have to realize where the Cardinals have been. Their owner, Bill Bidwill, moved them here in 1988 dreaming of a domed stadium he insists was promised to him. And he dreamed that dome would be filled every Sunday with hungry fans who had finally gotten their taste of the big leagues.
Then the savings-and-loan scandal hit Arizona and all appetite for public giveaways disappeared. The Cardinals spent the next 18 years at Sun Devil Stadium on the Arizona State University campus in Tempe, where the chief amenity was rows and rows of aluminum bleachers that baked in the midday sun, practically scalding the few fans willing to show up.
"It was tough," said Redskins assistant head coach Joe Bugel, one in a line of Cardinals head coaches who failed at Sun Devil Stadium. "We were averaging only 40, 45,000 fans and you'd go on the road and there would be 68,000 fans. It affects the players a little bit."
As new stadiums rose in other NFL cities, Arizona's shabby reputation grew. The locker rooms at Sun Devil Stadium were considered the worst in the league. The early-season days were so hot the league refused to give the Cardinals a first-week game at home. For 18 years, they played their Week 1 game on the road. Sometimes they played almost the whole month of September before finally getting a home game.
By then, morale was so low, the players hardly seemed to care anymore.
"It makes it difficult when you open on the road every year," said Dennis Green, the Cardinals' head coach. "You feel like you aren't getting a fair deal. You start wondering why the league is out to get you. After awhile you start to think a lot of things like that."
Players stayed clear of the Cardinals. Even though a large number of professional athletes make their homes around here, they wanted nothing to do with the dismal team on the north side of Tempe. Not that management was tempted to do much about it. With no revenue coming in, the Bidwills -- already saddled with a reputation for being miserly -- lowered the payroll. While other teams were trying to figure out how to squeeze in more top players under a restrictive salary cap, the Cardinals sometimes didn't even spend up to the cap. And rarely was a significant player re-signed. As soon as anyone good got a sniff of free agency, he was gone.
The lowest point came on Sept. 14, 2003, when an announced crowd of 23,127 watched the team lose to Seattle, 38-0. There may not have been more than 15,000 people in the stadium. But by then, the first pilings of Cardinals Stadium were being driven into the ground about 20 miles to the northwest in Glendale.
Everything has changed now. It is the Cardinals' second exhibition game of the year and the stadium is alive. In May, the team that struggled to get 35,000 people a game into Sun Devil Stadium announced it had sold out all of its season tickets this season. The new place is filled with a strange sensation, something the team never experienced during its days at ASU.
Noise.
Yes, there is a buzz, and it is the sound of commerce. You can hear it in the registers that ching at the concession stands and in the shouts of the beer man selling 22-ounce Heinekens for $11.50. You hear it, too, in the man in the black T-shirt with the letters "S.A.F.E. Security" printed on the back as he tries to corral the dozens of fans who must line up -- line up! -- just to get inside the team's store to buy an Anquan Boldin jersey or a straw fedora with the Cardinals logo on the front.
The corridors are clogged with fans in scarlet Cardinals jerseys, many with the price tags barely ripped off. They wear Kurt Warner, Edgerrin James and Larry Fitzgerald jerseys. Perhaps this doesn't seem unique to fans in Washington, Pittsburgh, Dallas or any other place in the NFL. But in Phoenix, where the chances of seeing a buffalo-skin parka were as great as finding a Cardinals jersey, it is a significant sign of progress.
"Now we've just caught up to the rest of the league," Michael Bidwill said.
Michael Bidwill is the one who probably saved the Cardinals. Bill Bidwill was never particularly good at community relations. His ever-present bolo and bowties were more objects of scorn than the endearing trademarks of one of the last patriarchs of a football family in which the game was the family business. This cost him in St. Louis and it cost him here when he arrived and began demanding the domed stadium he was promised.
Michael Bidwill didn't want to be a part of the family business. He wanted to create his own identity. He left St. Louis as a teenager, enrolled at Georgetown Prep in North Bethesda, then set out to find his niche as a lawyer. After finishing law school at Catholic University, he clerked in the U.S. attorney's office in Washington before moving to Phoenix, where he was a federal prosecutor for six years.
It was in Washington where he saw the disdain the public had for his father and realized the team had to get a new stadium or it would never stand a chance of catching up to the rest of the league. He went to work for his father in 1996. Almost immediately, perceptions began to change.
The young attorney had charm. He attended public meetings. He gave speeches. He gave money to charities. Inside the team, he was seen as a ray of hope.
"He's got a great understanding and a great business sense," Bugel said. "Unfortunately when I was there, Michael was a prosecutor and not in charge of the team."
What he did was give people at least a reason to consider thinking favorably about the Cardinals.
"He does not have the type of personality where he's going to go out and make himself available to a lot of media interviews or feel comfortable giving speeches on why we should build the stadium or feel comfortable in front of a number of different television cameras," Michael Bidwill said of his father. "Being a public speaker in the courtroom and otherwise I felt like I could maybe help with that. . . . I knew not to take it personally when people on the other side of the issue said: 'Let's not invest the money in stadiums; let's put it into public safety or education or fixing potholes in the streets. Those are things we should be doing.' I also made the argument that we needed to build the stadium."
There is an aggressiveness to Michael Bidwill, an energy that seems to confirm what people in Phoenix say -- that he wants to win badly. Where his father moves gingerly in public, Michael barges into rooms, his voice booming. And when he sits for an interview, he does not lounge in his chair but pushes right up against the table, almost on top of his questioner.
"In many cases trying a case is similar" to football, he said. "It's the preparation and making sure. Who's to say I might not have been the smartest lawyer or the best advocate in the courtroom, but I could always be the most prepared in the courtroom. So I would always work very hard. And I think if you look at football, the teams that come prepared to play are usually the successful ones."
Ultimately, it was Michael Bidwill who got the team to offer contract extensions and try to spend closer to the salary cap, things that made the team seem closer to a real NFL franchise. But it still took the Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority, the Cardinals' partner in the stadium fight, to help push the project through.
It was the authority that added funding for spring training sites and youth athletic fields to the November 2000 initiative in which Maricopa County voters approved a hotel-motel tax and rental car surcharge to pay for the $455 million Cardinals stadium.
"If it was just about the Cardinals, it would not have passed," said Ted Ferris, the authority's president and CEO.
Likewise, it was the authority that insisted on the rolling field rather than the cheaper and more common turf that many teams use. The authority figured it could host more trade shows and conventions with a stadium floor wired for electricity and the Internet. It also was the authority that pushed for the Glendale site over the Cardinals' objections, understanding there was more room for parking in Glendale and that the population was going to continue to move to the north and west.
"The stadium in the NFL makes completely the difference between the teams that can compete in January," Bidwill said. "Look at the teams that are competing in [the playoffs]; the vast majority of them have new stadiums. The teams in the last six Super Bowls are all teams with new stadiums."
Just the other day, Forbes magazine released its new list of values for NFL franchises, and the Cardinals went from next-to-last to 24th with an estimated worth of $789 million.
"This is a football town," Ferris said. "If the Cardinals start winning, people will get behind it. There are a lot of Midwestern transplants and they love football."
Yes, they have shown up. But everybody also holds their breath mainly because these are still the Cardinals and the Cardinals are still owned by Bill Bidwill, and that makes everybody a little nervous. The offensive line is still a mess and already rumors are flying, suggesting that the Bidwills will not spend their newfound money, that the James signing was a tease.
"We've been able to [sell out the stadium] on promise and potential," Green said. "We haven't jumped to a 10-win or 11-win season yet, but people believe we can do it."
The other day, James, overwhelmed with stadium questions, finally said, "Buildings don't win championships."
Indeed, while the air conditioning might have given the Bidwills a second chance in their new city, it won't be enough to keep fans coming back.
Only winning can do that.
By Les Carpenter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 10, 2006; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/09/AR2006090900762.html
GLENDALE, Ariz. -- Across the valley of the stucco and tile, where suburbs seem to bloom with each rise of the sun, soars a new kind of building. It is an ethereal sight, a great silver mushroom that looks as if it has sprouted from the desert floor.
Already, the best architectural minds have journeyed here to see Cardinals Stadium, to touch its smooth aluminum skin, watch the huge translucent roof open and close and see the 403-foot long, grass-covered tray that is the field slip outside into the parking lot "like a cake pan coming out of the oven," as Cardinals Vice President Michael Bidwill likes to say. They luxuriated in the 63,400 seats and lounged in the suites officially named "luxury lofts." When they were through, they pronounced the building one of the remarkable architectural feats of our time.
But it is a 20th-century innovation that Sunday brings the Cardinals their first Week 1 home game since they moved to Arizona from St. Louis.
Air conditioning.
"Air conditioning has made a big difference in terms our fans coming back," Bidwill said. "They didn't want to sit out there when it was 100-something degrees out on those metal bleachers."
Air conditioning has changed everything, bringing a season of sellouts to a team that hasn't seen a full house in six years. It has brought hope to a city that long ago gave up on professional football and, most important, it has brought piles of money to a team that had been left behind in the NFL's financial boom.
This, in turn, delivered to the Cardinals the best player in free agency last winter, running back Edgerrin James. In the locker room last week, James smiled and began to shout. "This is the perfect place to be!" he said. "In the end a lot of people will think I have a great vision for coming here. They're serious about winning."
To understand how a air conditioning can save an NFL team, you have to realize where the Cardinals have been. Their owner, Bill Bidwill, moved them here in 1988 dreaming of a domed stadium he insists was promised to him. And he dreamed that dome would be filled every Sunday with hungry fans who had finally gotten their taste of the big leagues.
Then the savings-and-loan scandal hit Arizona and all appetite for public giveaways disappeared. The Cardinals spent the next 18 years at Sun Devil Stadium on the Arizona State University campus in Tempe, where the chief amenity was rows and rows of aluminum bleachers that baked in the midday sun, practically scalding the few fans willing to show up.
"It was tough," said Redskins assistant head coach Joe Bugel, one in a line of Cardinals head coaches who failed at Sun Devil Stadium. "We were averaging only 40, 45,000 fans and you'd go on the road and there would be 68,000 fans. It affects the players a little bit."
As new stadiums rose in other NFL cities, Arizona's shabby reputation grew. The locker rooms at Sun Devil Stadium were considered the worst in the league. The early-season days were so hot the league refused to give the Cardinals a first-week game at home. For 18 years, they played their Week 1 game on the road. Sometimes they played almost the whole month of September before finally getting a home game.
By then, morale was so low, the players hardly seemed to care anymore.
"It makes it difficult when you open on the road every year," said Dennis Green, the Cardinals' head coach. "You feel like you aren't getting a fair deal. You start wondering why the league is out to get you. After awhile you start to think a lot of things like that."
Players stayed clear of the Cardinals. Even though a large number of professional athletes make their homes around here, they wanted nothing to do with the dismal team on the north side of Tempe. Not that management was tempted to do much about it. With no revenue coming in, the Bidwills -- already saddled with a reputation for being miserly -- lowered the payroll. While other teams were trying to figure out how to squeeze in more top players under a restrictive salary cap, the Cardinals sometimes didn't even spend up to the cap. And rarely was a significant player re-signed. As soon as anyone good got a sniff of free agency, he was gone.
The lowest point came on Sept. 14, 2003, when an announced crowd of 23,127 watched the team lose to Seattle, 38-0. There may not have been more than 15,000 people in the stadium. But by then, the first pilings of Cardinals Stadium were being driven into the ground about 20 miles to the northwest in Glendale.
Everything has changed now. It is the Cardinals' second exhibition game of the year and the stadium is alive. In May, the team that struggled to get 35,000 people a game into Sun Devil Stadium announced it had sold out all of its season tickets this season. The new place is filled with a strange sensation, something the team never experienced during its days at ASU.
Noise.
Yes, there is a buzz, and it is the sound of commerce. You can hear it in the registers that ching at the concession stands and in the shouts of the beer man selling 22-ounce Heinekens for $11.50. You hear it, too, in the man in the black T-shirt with the letters "S.A.F.E. Security" printed on the back as he tries to corral the dozens of fans who must line up -- line up! -- just to get inside the team's store to buy an Anquan Boldin jersey or a straw fedora with the Cardinals logo on the front.
The corridors are clogged with fans in scarlet Cardinals jerseys, many with the price tags barely ripped off. They wear Kurt Warner, Edgerrin James and Larry Fitzgerald jerseys. Perhaps this doesn't seem unique to fans in Washington, Pittsburgh, Dallas or any other place in the NFL. But in Phoenix, where the chances of seeing a buffalo-skin parka were as great as finding a Cardinals jersey, it is a significant sign of progress.
"Now we've just caught up to the rest of the league," Michael Bidwill said.
Michael Bidwill is the one who probably saved the Cardinals. Bill Bidwill was never particularly good at community relations. His ever-present bolo and bowties were more objects of scorn than the endearing trademarks of one of the last patriarchs of a football family in which the game was the family business. This cost him in St. Louis and it cost him here when he arrived and began demanding the domed stadium he was promised.
Michael Bidwill didn't want to be a part of the family business. He wanted to create his own identity. He left St. Louis as a teenager, enrolled at Georgetown Prep in North Bethesda, then set out to find his niche as a lawyer. After finishing law school at Catholic University, he clerked in the U.S. attorney's office in Washington before moving to Phoenix, where he was a federal prosecutor for six years.
It was in Washington where he saw the disdain the public had for his father and realized the team had to get a new stadium or it would never stand a chance of catching up to the rest of the league. He went to work for his father in 1996. Almost immediately, perceptions began to change.
The young attorney had charm. He attended public meetings. He gave speeches. He gave money to charities. Inside the team, he was seen as a ray of hope.
"He's got a great understanding and a great business sense," Bugel said. "Unfortunately when I was there, Michael was a prosecutor and not in charge of the team."
What he did was give people at least a reason to consider thinking favorably about the Cardinals.
"He does not have the type of personality where he's going to go out and make himself available to a lot of media interviews or feel comfortable giving speeches on why we should build the stadium or feel comfortable in front of a number of different television cameras," Michael Bidwill said of his father. "Being a public speaker in the courtroom and otherwise I felt like I could maybe help with that. . . . I knew not to take it personally when people on the other side of the issue said: 'Let's not invest the money in stadiums; let's put it into public safety or education or fixing potholes in the streets. Those are things we should be doing.' I also made the argument that we needed to build the stadium."
There is an aggressiveness to Michael Bidwill, an energy that seems to confirm what people in Phoenix say -- that he wants to win badly. Where his father moves gingerly in public, Michael barges into rooms, his voice booming. And when he sits for an interview, he does not lounge in his chair but pushes right up against the table, almost on top of his questioner.
"In many cases trying a case is similar" to football, he said. "It's the preparation and making sure. Who's to say I might not have been the smartest lawyer or the best advocate in the courtroom, but I could always be the most prepared in the courtroom. So I would always work very hard. And I think if you look at football, the teams that come prepared to play are usually the successful ones."
Ultimately, it was Michael Bidwill who got the team to offer contract extensions and try to spend closer to the salary cap, things that made the team seem closer to a real NFL franchise. But it still took the Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority, the Cardinals' partner in the stadium fight, to help push the project through.
It was the authority that added funding for spring training sites and youth athletic fields to the November 2000 initiative in which Maricopa County voters approved a hotel-motel tax and rental car surcharge to pay for the $455 million Cardinals stadium.
"If it was just about the Cardinals, it would not have passed," said Ted Ferris, the authority's president and CEO.
Likewise, it was the authority that insisted on the rolling field rather than the cheaper and more common turf that many teams use. The authority figured it could host more trade shows and conventions with a stadium floor wired for electricity and the Internet. It also was the authority that pushed for the Glendale site over the Cardinals' objections, understanding there was more room for parking in Glendale and that the population was going to continue to move to the north and west.
"The stadium in the NFL makes completely the difference between the teams that can compete in January," Bidwill said. "Look at the teams that are competing in [the playoffs]; the vast majority of them have new stadiums. The teams in the last six Super Bowls are all teams with new stadiums."
Just the other day, Forbes magazine released its new list of values for NFL franchises, and the Cardinals went from next-to-last to 24th with an estimated worth of $789 million.
"This is a football town," Ferris said. "If the Cardinals start winning, people will get behind it. There are a lot of Midwestern transplants and they love football."
Yes, they have shown up. But everybody also holds their breath mainly because these are still the Cardinals and the Cardinals are still owned by Bill Bidwill, and that makes everybody a little nervous. The offensive line is still a mess and already rumors are flying, suggesting that the Bidwills will not spend their newfound money, that the James signing was a tease.
"We've been able to [sell out the stadium] on promise and potential," Green said. "We haven't jumped to a 10-win or 11-win season yet, but people believe we can do it."
The other day, James, overwhelmed with stadium questions, finally said, "Buildings don't win championships."
Indeed, while the air conditioning might have given the Bidwills a second chance in their new city, it won't be enough to keep fans coming back.
Only winning can do that.
