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100% embarrassed
LINCICOME: What's next? Flying pigs?
By Bernie Lincicome, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published January 18, 2009 at 10:53 p.m.
New rallying cry for the Broncos, for all the NFL, actually: Nine is enough.
Or, if the Arizona Cardinals can do it, any team can.
I suppose, just to make sure, an envoy on ice skates ought to be sent to see if indeed hell has frozen over (my favorite album by the Eagles, not the football team), check overhead to make sure no pigs are flying, look to see which direction the sun is setting and check the calendar to make certain every day this month is not a Sunday.
Explanations are not as necessary as admiration, because never has anyone so unlikely gone so far with so little.
This is not quite like the Cubs making the World Series, not Toronto back in the Stanley Cup Finals, but something like it, the Cardinals a football team that is pictured in the dictionary under the word "downtrodden," but never quite romantic enough in decades of losing to be beloved or agonized over.
There is no Cardinals angst, no curses to curse, no moments of grand regret, none of the stuff that naturally clings to six decades of losing. The Cardinals have been a slow, accumulative annoyance, like moss or mildew.
And now they are the champions of the NFC, a designation easily translated heretofore as Not For Cardinals.
Awaiting in Tampa in two weeks will be the Steelers of Pittsburgh, they with a trophy case already cluttered with sleek, silver footballs named after Vince Lombardi. The last trophy the Cardinals won was named after a sporting goods dealer.
Arizona is the place that built a new stadium so others can use it to play championship games. It is not just strange and unexpected that the Cardinals should get a trophy of their own there, but probably a violation of the lease.
They are vagabond outsiders skipping across America without finding success or devotion, finally finding just enough luck and an antique quarterback with just enough juice left in the jar.
Philadelphia earned more of what keeps its sports teams in that special bag of fan remorse, though nearly as unanticipated as the Cardinals, the Eagles losing another so close to the end adds fresh ache to familiar pain.
The Philly fans might think that having the Phillies in one year was too much to ask of the Eagles, but mostly they will swear at their quarterback for playing down to their expectations or boo their receivers for having fingers too short or officials for not giving them a single break, though they got many.
Try not to think that the Cardinals are a team that won only one more game than the Broncos. They were a team in the solid middle of the NFL, but a team that managed not to fall off the top of its division while the rest were changing coaches and sleeping late.
This is very similar to the way the Broncos tried to do it, except they were the ones who went to bed too soon.
The discussion may begin on whether the Cardinals, with roots to the 19th century, once the Phoenix and St. Louis and Chicago Cardinals - with more place names than a French village - are the worst team to ever make it so far.
Maybe for the Steelers in the Super Bowl, so used to switching names, they ought to just call themselves the Arizona Patsies.
Considering that the Cardinals have clocked their opponents by a total of 33 points in three playoff games, two at home, one on the road, it may be hard to place them behind the Giants of last year, or the '03 Carolina Panthers or the '79 Rams, then of Los Angeles.
My personal dog, a team I knew very well, was the '82 Dolphins, a team so slow it could not catch John Riggins from behind, a team that got to the Super Bowl by leaving the sprinklers on all week in the Orange Bowl to counteract a faster Jets team in the AFC Championship Game, a team quarterbacked by David Woodley. Enough said.
This Cardinals team is worse than any of those.
Since the Super Bowl was created some XLIII years ago, one team had made the Super Bowl with only nine wins, those '79 Rams. No nine-win team has ever won it all, and only two 10-win teams have done it, one of them just last year when the Giants gave the Patriots their only loss.
It will take at least as much of a miracle - maybe two helmet catches instead of one - to beat the Steelers as the Giants did the Pats, but the Cardinals have always been a team with nothing to lose, as nearly every scoreboard will attest.
By Bernie Lincicome, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published January 18, 2009 at 10:53 p.m.
New rallying cry for the Broncos, for all the NFL, actually: Nine is enough.
Or, if the Arizona Cardinals can do it, any team can.
I suppose, just to make sure, an envoy on ice skates ought to be sent to see if indeed hell has frozen over (my favorite album by the Eagles, not the football team), check overhead to make sure no pigs are flying, look to see which direction the sun is setting and check the calendar to make certain every day this month is not a Sunday.
Explanations are not as necessary as admiration, because never has anyone so unlikely gone so far with so little.
This is not quite like the Cubs making the World Series, not Toronto back in the Stanley Cup Finals, but something like it, the Cardinals a football team that is pictured in the dictionary under the word "downtrodden," but never quite romantic enough in decades of losing to be beloved or agonized over.
There is no Cardinals angst, no curses to curse, no moments of grand regret, none of the stuff that naturally clings to six decades of losing. The Cardinals have been a slow, accumulative annoyance, like moss or mildew.
And now they are the champions of the NFC, a designation easily translated heretofore as Not For Cardinals.
Awaiting in Tampa in two weeks will be the Steelers of Pittsburgh, they with a trophy case already cluttered with sleek, silver footballs named after Vince Lombardi. The last trophy the Cardinals won was named after a sporting goods dealer.
Arizona is the place that built a new stadium so others can use it to play championship games. It is not just strange and unexpected that the Cardinals should get a trophy of their own there, but probably a violation of the lease.
They are vagabond outsiders skipping across America without finding success or devotion, finally finding just enough luck and an antique quarterback with just enough juice left in the jar.
Philadelphia earned more of what keeps its sports teams in that special bag of fan remorse, though nearly as unanticipated as the Cardinals, the Eagles losing another so close to the end adds fresh ache to familiar pain.
The Philly fans might think that having the Phillies in one year was too much to ask of the Eagles, but mostly they will swear at their quarterback for playing down to their expectations or boo their receivers for having fingers too short or officials for not giving them a single break, though they got many.
Try not to think that the Cardinals are a team that won only one more game than the Broncos. They were a team in the solid middle of the NFL, but a team that managed not to fall off the top of its division while the rest were changing coaches and sleeping late.
This is very similar to the way the Broncos tried to do it, except they were the ones who went to bed too soon.
The discussion may begin on whether the Cardinals, with roots to the 19th century, once the Phoenix and St. Louis and Chicago Cardinals - with more place names than a French village - are the worst team to ever make it so far.
Maybe for the Steelers in the Super Bowl, so used to switching names, they ought to just call themselves the Arizona Patsies.
Considering that the Cardinals have clocked their opponents by a total of 33 points in three playoff games, two at home, one on the road, it may be hard to place them behind the Giants of last year, or the '03 Carolina Panthers or the '79 Rams, then of Los Angeles.
My personal dog, a team I knew very well, was the '82 Dolphins, a team so slow it could not catch John Riggins from behind, a team that got to the Super Bowl by leaving the sprinklers on all week in the Orange Bowl to counteract a faster Jets team in the AFC Championship Game, a team quarterbacked by David Woodley. Enough said.
This Cardinals team is worse than any of those.
Since the Super Bowl was created some XLIII years ago, one team had made the Super Bowl with only nine wins, those '79 Rams. No nine-win team has ever won it all, and only two 10-win teams have done it, one of them just last year when the Giants gave the Patriots their only loss.
It will take at least as much of a miracle - maybe two helmet catches instead of one - to beat the Steelers as the Giants did the Pats, but the Cardinals have always been a team with nothing to lose, as nearly every scoreboard will attest.
