Welcome to the Super Bowl boys.  Now what the heck are you doing here?

SCOTT JACOBS

Planet Earth, the Arizona Cardinals.  Arizona Cardinals, Planet Earth.  There you guys have been formally introduced.  Now we bypass the meet and greet process, and just get down to the nitty gritty: just who are you guys?  What are you doing here?  Are you too stupid to know that the Cardinals aren’t supposed to be here?

C’mon Arizona, just who are you trying to fool here?  The Super Bowl?  The Big Stage? You guys are lucky–Lucky!– to get a national game a year during the regular season.  And now you’re all over everyone’s TV’s for one whole week?  No one knows what to do with this story.  No one knows where to begin.  What happened to the team that always failed when the lights started to shine at all?  What happened to the group of guys that couldn’t live up to their potential?

What happened to the joke?  The walking punchline?  The team that has had a new logo since 2005, yet even sites like CBS Sportsline, still use their old one. No one apparently complains, because well, when you have an invisible team, with a silent fan base, people kick you around.  They don’t respect you.  You have to win to earn respect.  You have to strive for bigger things than mediocrity.

You guys aren’t supposed to be here.  Everyone’s like “yeah I know them,” but no one did a few weeks ago.  On Fox’s telecast a few weeks ago of Arizona’s throttling of Carolina the announcers were still mistaking the Cardinals for Phoenix.  Newsflash folks: the Cardinals became the Arizona Cardinals almost 15 years ago!  They changed from Phoenix to Arizona back in 1994!

The Cardinals don’t make sense.  They don’t!  They have a running back who has openly demanded to be released so he can play for a new team, a wide receiver who’s been miserable the whole year because they haven’t given him a new contract, a prima donna backup quarterback who moves closer to becoming a bust every year, and an owner who is so invisible from the media, that one writer the other day stated he had never heard Bill Bidwill bring up anything in the owner’s meetings.

But here they are.  In full color.  They’re putting their whole name in the endzone for the Super Bowl just to make sure you know who the heck they are!  They’re not the St. Louis Cardinals.  They’re the Arizona Cardinals! The team that won nine games this year in the regular season.  They beat the Cowboys on a blocked punt in overtime that was recovered for a touchdown, marking the first time in NFL history a game ended that way.

The Cardinals are the NFL’s guinea pigs.  Send ‘em to Mexico and let’s see if this whole International Series idea has legs.  Their fans won’t mind losing a home game. So the Cardinals went to Mexico in 2005, as the home team against the 49ers, and were booed mercifully.  But hey, it let the world know that, yes, Arizona still does have a pro football team.

I went to the mall the other day in Tallahassee (two malls actually) and they didn’t even have the official NFC Champs shirt. But they did have a red NFC Champs shirt that basically stated “second class.” The name of the store: Sports Fan-Attic.  But they had every Steeler AFC Champs gear and apparrel you could ever want.  Because quite frankly, their isn’t a demand for annonymous Cardinals gear.  They’re in the Super Bowl, yet they’re merely a curiosity.

They are seven point underdogs in this Super Bowl, despite the fact that they beat an 11, 12, and 9 win trifecta of NFC playoff teams to get to this point.  The Steelers knocked off 8 win San Diego, and 11 win Baltimore to get here.  But they’re the Steelers.  They have history.  They have rings.  They have the terrible towels, they are beloved.  While questions rampaged this past week about whether the Cardinals were the worst Super Bowl team ever, the Steelers were showered with the question if they were the greatest franchise in sports!  No one respects the Cards.  They’re not warm and fuzzy like the Cubs. They don’t push the red button and get ejected.  They follow the person who pushes the red button, and people laugh.

They’ve made it to the Super Bowl now, and still they’re overshadowed.  Steelers West they’re being called, because quite frankly, their coaching staff brought with them what makes the Steelers the Steelers.

So for the next week, you’ll hear their names, you’ll listen to their stories.  And you’ll sit there and ask yourself this question:

Who do these guys think they are, coming out of the shadows like that out of nowhere?

And then they’ll beat the Steelers, go to DisneyWorld, and tourists will stop and ask their friends, “are those the guys that won the Super Bowl?”

“Nah,” they’ll reply, “for surely I would know who they are.”

Popularity: 4% [?]