I am an Arizona Cardinals fan. There, I said it. And what do I hear? Laughter? Sympathetic groans? No, not a hint of it. Not anymore. At best I hear a murmur of grudging respect, and at worst chants of glory-chaser, or suggestions that I’m riding some sort of bandwagon that has, for the first time in over half a century, decided to take a detour via Phoenix.
No the truth is I have been a Cardinal for the duration of my adult life. Being an international fan with no American ancestry or relation, I have little geographical loyalty and based my team selection on the likelihood of me spending time in that state, and since my father; a travelling geologist partial to the desert sun, was a frequent visitor of the annual Tucson Fossil and Mineral show, my excuse to dabble in the culture stateside was set.
And so was my team.
I can’t deny that I as well as convenience, my decision to tie my football hopes to one of the most hapless franchises in the history of the NFL was compounded by aesthetics, and the Cardinals’ visually pleasing combination of a passionate red, and traditional white had me hooked. My fate was tied to the desert birds, and my wallet to the imaginations of their kit designers, which thus far have not failed to impress.
So imagine my joy (albeit tarnished by a smothering blanket of disbelief that never truly lifted until the wintry morning of February 2nd) when the luckless franchise of seasoned ridicule found themselves one game away from winning it all. Of course history recalls that they fell at the final hurdle, but they so very nearly did not.
Kurt Warner’s performance, a consummate one that was typical of his stellar season, was surely of MVP calibre, and barring any last second aerial acrobatics from the high-flying Larry Fitzgerald, would have landed him a new Cadillac and the prestigious honour of being the only quarterback to lead two different teams to Superbowl victory (he won with the St. Louis Rams after the ’99 season. Ironically, St. Louis was the former home of the Cardinals, as well as their seasoned signal caller).
Fitzgerald, although quiet for the first half, exploded in the fourth quarter, and with the help of some precision passing from number thirteen, very nearly rallied his blissfully naïve, and refreshingly upstart team to victory. You see, the magic of this run was that popular opinion dictated that the Cardinals should not have even come so close. Frustratingly, they won the game on nearly every front except the one that matters, and this is an exceptional testament to the parity of the NFL, and of the truly inspired foundations on which the league is built.
Love it as I do, I can not deny that the NFL is an ingenious capitalist behemoth. Teams are founded on a supply and demand basis, and the loyalty to the town continues only as long as the ringing of the cash registers. And does this detract from the purity of the sport? Not in the slightest. It does in fact enhance it. The stable environment in which the worst teams can continue to thrive is an assurance that the league will always generate ticket sales. The lack of a relegation system prevents crowd alienation or the collapse of a brand, and the inverse draft selection that sees the worst team from the previous season select the top rated college prospect aims to establish a year in, year out equilibrium that is intent on providing fair competition for the paying public.
Put simply, there is no Charlton Athletic in the NFL. And despite their chromatic similarity to my beloved birds that is just as well.
In a league that thrives on statistics and records, team and individual performance over decades, not minutes, it is essential that the teams remain constant.
And last year, after fifty two years of drought, the literal and metaphorical kind, a storm of optimism broke above Phoenix. The NFL’s oldest franchise, having journeyed across the continent from humble beginnings as the Racine Cardinals, playing out of Chicago in faded red hand-me-down uniforms, to the now sold-out-every-week, state-of-the-art, pride-of-the-league-and-rightly-so stadium finally tasted the sanguinity of February rain, falling from the heavens of Tampa Bay, and soaking their red and white uniforms, that on that special day bore the emblem of Superbowl XLIII.
They are proof that the NFL’s system works. They are proof that the impossible is possible. They are warriors of hope, and the creditors of long disappointed fanaticism. But more than anything, regardless of the seemingly inevitable result of Superbowl XLIII, they are the heroes of sport, and for me justify the money modern athletes are paid to ply their trade. In an age where the dominance of our indigenous sports teams is orchestrated by the laxity of the owners’ purse-strings, the NFL’s salary cap, and the multi-partisan draft that despite America’s game’s capitalist engine, is refreshingly left-wing, ensures that the West Broms, and the Stoke Cities, and the consistently mid-table Fulhams can fly from obscurity and taste the fruit of success.
And so I turn to the common question: Is there a place for the salary cap in British sport? Unfortunately, I learn towards the negative, but not because I don’t believe it would work, or that it would benefit our established institutions, but because our culture is simply not clear-minded enough to implement a ground-up system that, in the case of the states, has taken years to refine, and was only possible because of the brave-new-world’s advanced starting point.
When the first pioneers of the wild frontier stood before their own blank canvas, they were armed with years of experience. They knew and understood their capabilities. They dreamed of a bright new world, where the detritus of failed experiments were non-existent, because what their successful brethren had proved as revolutionary, was now to them base and common. They had a head start, not in time, but in an avoidance of error, and they were able to implement a structure that is, for our muddled and interwoven society of polarisation, untenable and almost unpalatable.
For some reason, the Brits dislike the sterility of the American dream. It’s too shrink-wrapped, too plastic. It has no culture of its own. So what if some say it’s perfect; it still doesn’t amount to character. And that’s what the Brits love. It can be gritty, gnarled, battered to kingdom come, and even categorically crap, but guaranteed, if it shows a stiff upper lip and sticks it to some foe it really shouldn’t be sticking it to, it’s deemed alright by the plucky British public.
The ignorant masses refer to American Football as Rugby in pads; grossly derogatory for any fan or player of gridiron for its sheer idiocy. It prompts a swelling tempest of rage that would beach the QE2, and still have enough wind power to blow dry Elizabeth Royal’s Barnet.
Pick up THE HARE newspaper at Night and Day, Bar Centro, Font or Tiger Lounge in Manchester town centre, or the Oakwood in Glossop.
E-mail theharenewspaper@hotmail.co.uk with questions, comments or contributory pieces.
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