The Cardinals franchise has been around since 1898 making it the oldest professional football franchise in the US of A. Contrary to nature, however, it seems that the only thing the Cardinals have learned in the last 110 years is how to lose. Let's take a look at the winning percentage history of the Cardinals franchise throughout the years. Wikipedia had no data on the Cardinals before 1920 so deal with it.
[click on this graph if you're not allergic to truth]
I guess the depression took its toll on everyone, or something.
Now let's look at the average winning percentage according to where the Cardinals have existed.
35.8% - Chicago (1898-1959, 62 years)
46.7% - St. Louis (1960-1987, 28 years)
34.5% - Phoenix (1988-2006/present, 18 years)
39% - Winning percentage since 1920-2006
Now let's divide this history into 10-year increments in a desperate attempt to see something over 50%. Let's hope that it doesn't occur when they moved to a different city or it could make analyzing the data a little difficult.
[click on this chart to see what that stupid blonde woman's five year old daughter from those 'teach yourself excel' infomercials figured out on her own in five minutes but took her an entire course to understand]
OK. Now how about if I do the ultimate in statistics cherry picking and look for a 10-year period that might be over 50%? Looks like it'd be either somewhere near the first ten years or from the mid 40's to the mid 50's.
There are 4 10-year spans of a +50% winning record!!
1967 - 1977 - 50%
1968 - 1978 - 50.7%
1974 - 1984 - 52.1%
1975 - 1985 - 50.6%
This also seems like a fitting time to tell you that the Chicago Cardinals were also NFL champions in 1925 and 1947! Woo-hoo!
While looking through these percentages you may have at one point thought, but if you look at any team's entire history they all probably average out at around 50%. True. You win a championship one or two years, have a few good seasons then a slump, then do that over and over again and you're going to have an average of about 50%. But if you were smart enough to think of that then you're also smart enough, or not, to realize that the Cardinals are just consistently bad. And that's all there is to it.
So this would be all fine and dandy if it wasn't for the fact that taxpayers had to pay for the newly built stadium of this phenomenally pathetic excuse for a franchise.
Here's a breakdown of the funding.
The Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority - $302.3 million
The Arizona Cardinals - $143.2 million
The City of Glendale - $9.5 million
The Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority was literally created through a proposition (in a 52% to 48% vote) to handle the taxpayers' money for the stadium. So, in other words, taxpayers had to pay over 2/3's the cost and The Arizona Cardinals had to pay less than 1/3. Well guess what, Bud Bidwell, if your team doesn't have enough money to pay for a new stadium, you don't get a new stadium because you suck and the Cardinals suck and if people cared about the worst team in the NFL (unverified but it sounds good) you'd have enough money for a new stadium! A description of what the AZSTA actually does is included at their website.
Also from their website.
B-b-b-but the stadium will bring in so much revenue and add to the economy. Why would the taxpayers not want to help pay for [insert professional sport's team name here]'s new stadium?!
With the Tax
Non fan (doesn't go to Cardinals games)
$1000 - $2 = $998
$998 * 99 = $98800
Fan
$1000 - $2 - $50 = $948
Total money left to put into economy = $99800
Without the Tax
Non fan
$1000 - $0 = $1000
$1000 * 99 = $99000
Fan
$1000 - $60 = $940
Total money left to put into economy = $99940
Jinkies! An extra $1140! Who would've guessed?! Multiply that by 40,000 and you get a butt load of money! You're welcome.
That's all in the past, however. The thing is built and life's moved on, the sun's still rising, and no one's head has exploded from the truth shattering realization that citizens are paying for places to give their money to to watch their crappy teams lose to the team that has better players and is more entertaining. I drove out to west Phoenix today for reasons known only to me and snapped these pictures of the University of Phoenix stadium (the University of Phoenix stadium, by the way, is actually not in Phoenix, it's in Glendale, which means that I'm still the most relevant thing on this planet to come from Glendale).
Oooooo...
Aaaaaaa...
[Honest to goodness the last picture was supposed to be of the bikers by themselves, I just couldn't turn my camera on fast enough to get the picture without the stadium.]
After the stadium was built everyone realized what a piece of crap eyesore it was so whoever it was trying to defend its existence started saying, Look, it looks like a snake! What in the world are you talking about?! It looks like a snake?! Well, yeah. See how it coils? (see first pic) What about it? I still don't see what you're talking about. Well, look at it from above. OK...wait, how am I supposed to do that other than when I'm on a plane leaving this 120 degree heat factory and vacationing somewhere where my fingerprints haven't been melted off from starting my car and putting on my metal seat belt?
Here's a quote from nflfootballstadiums.com.
I'd photoshop an image of a barrel cactus and a coiled rattlesnaked superimposed but I think I'm doing enough blog cliches as it is...and I don't have photoshop so screw you.
Anyways, my rant has gone on long enough. I need to go to sleep. I don't apologize for how I feel about this stadium or the Cardinals and I can't respect anyone who makes their excitement for "Cardinal football" apparent at any point during the course of our friendship, not even my brother-in-law (sorry, Corey). I wanted to find the season statistics for the Cardinals since they've been in Phoenix so I could confirm or debunk my feeling that every year the Cardinals do semi-well in preseason which brings a lot of "Cards are looking good this year" from KTAR but invariably results in, "maybe next year."
Scalping ticket's isn't a bad way to get some extra cash. Voting against the stadium would've been a better way. Charging people $200 a night to stay at your house close to the stadium super bowl weekend is even better.
35.8% - Chicago (1898-1959, 62 years)
46.7% - St. Louis (1960-1987, 28 years)
34.5% - Phoenix (1988-2006/present, 18 years)
39% - Winning percentage since 1920-2006
Now let's divide this history into 10-year increments in a desperate attempt to see something over 50%. Let's hope that it doesn't occur when they moved to a different city or it could make analyzing the data a little difficult.
[click on this chart to see what that stupid blonde woman's five year old daughter from those 'teach yourself excel' infomercials figured out on her own in five minutes but took her an entire course to understand]
OK. Now how about if I do the ultimate in statistics cherry picking and look for a 10-year period that might be over 50%? Looks like it'd be either somewhere near the first ten years or from the mid 40's to the mid 50's.
There are 4 10-year spans of a +50% winning record!!
1967 - 1977 - 50%
1968 - 1978 - 50.7%
1974 - 1984 - 52.1%
1975 - 1985 - 50.6%
This also seems like a fitting time to tell you that the Chicago Cardinals were also NFL champions in 1925 and 1947! Woo-hoo!
While looking through these percentages you may have at one point thought, but if you look at any team's entire history they all probably average out at around 50%. True. You win a championship one or two years, have a few good seasons then a slump, then do that over and over again and you're going to have an average of about 50%. But if you were smart enough to think of that then you're also smart enough, or not, to realize that the Cardinals are just consistently bad. And that's all there is to it.
So this would be all fine and dandy if it wasn't for the fact that taxpayers had to pay for the newly built stadium of this phenomenally pathetic excuse for a franchise.
Here's a breakdown of the funding.
The Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority - $302.3 million
The Arizona Cardinals - $143.2 million
The City of Glendale - $9.5 million
The Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority was literally created through a proposition (in a 52% to 48% vote) to handle the taxpayers' money for the stadium. So, in other words, taxpayers had to pay over 2/3's the cost and The Arizona Cardinals had to pay less than 1/3. Well guess what, Bud Bidwell, if your team doesn't have enough money to pay for a new stadium, you don't get a new stadium because you suck and the Cardinals suck and if people cared about the worst team in the NFL (unverified but it sounds good) you'd have enough money for a new stadium! A description of what the AZSTA actually does is included at their website.
The Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority is a Municipal Corporation dedicated to enhancing our economy and our community's quality of life through the development of professional and amateur sports facilities, the attraction of entertainment, sporting, and business events, and through tourism promotion.So basically, there's a team of engineers that does some real work and then there's a bunch of space occupying office jobs where people do little more than learn how to not get caught playing solitaire on computers bought with taxpayer money.
Also from their website.
Great, so the board of directors has no financial motivation for working and are waiting for their five year term to end to pass their work on to the next clown. Well, guess it's no surprise then when stuff like this happens. If you don't want to discover truth by clicking on the link, here's a peek into its contents.The AZSTA Board of Directors is compresed of nine citizens of Maricopa Co. who volunteer their time and accept no compensation or per diem. The Board members are appointed to five-year terms by the Governor...
"We thought it was remarkable that the Governor's Office asked for a report on a taxpayer-funded agency on how they spend their money and were refused," Burke said.How can you resist learning the full story now?
B-b-b-but the stadium will bring in so much revenue and add to the economy. Why would the taxpayers not want to help pay for [insert professional sport's team name here]'s new stadium?!
It is estimated that all of AZSTA's activities and projects contribute $1.95 billion annually to the area economy.Hey, you know what could bring in even more than $1.95 billion annually to the economy? The exact same stadium built by the team that wants us to spend the money to watch them lose! Sure, you could argue that if the team had to pay for all of the costs then they would just charge more for tickets. Well fine! That's a wonderful conclusion! If you want to pay for a ticket, you should be the one paying for the ticket, not someone who's never going to a game and definitely not someone who lives on a budget, can't afford to go to a game, and is now burdened with another pointless tax increase. How does all that mumbo jumbo that I just said and don't want to edit translate into more money for the economy? Let's say your paycheck is a thousand dollars (that's a 1 with 3 zero's after it for you Cardinals fans, and the definition of the word 'paycheck' can be found in any local library). Let's say that 40,000 people go to a Cardinals game, which is about 1% of the Phoenix Metro area. So for my example here we'll compare 99 non Cardinals fans to 1 Cardinal fan. We'll assume the stadium tax is $2 and the average ticket costs $50 with the tax in place and $60 without the tax.
With the Tax
Non fan (doesn't go to Cardinals games)
$1000 - $2 = $998
$998 * 99 = $98800
Fan
$1000 - $2 - $50 = $948
Total money left to put into economy = $99800
Without the Tax
Non fan
$1000 - $0 = $1000
$1000 * 99 = $99000
Fan
$1000 - $60 = $940
Total money left to put into economy = $99940
Jinkies! An extra $1140! Who would've guessed?! Multiply that by 40,000 and you get a butt load of money! You're welcome.
That's all in the past, however. The thing is built and life's moved on, the sun's still rising, and no one's head has exploded from the truth shattering realization that citizens are paying for places to give their money to to watch their crappy teams lose to the team that has better players and is more entertaining. I drove out to west Phoenix today for reasons known only to me and snapped these pictures of the University of Phoenix stadium (the University of Phoenix stadium, by the way, is actually not in Phoenix, it's in Glendale, which means that I'm still the most relevant thing on this planet to come from Glendale).
Oooooo...
Aaaaaaa...
[Honest to goodness the last picture was supposed to be of the bikers by themselves, I just couldn't turn my camera on fast enough to get the picture without the stadium.]
After the stadium was built everyone realized what a piece of crap eyesore it was so whoever it was trying to defend its existence started saying, Look, it looks like a snake! What in the world are you talking about?! It looks like a snake?! Well, yeah. See how it coils? (see first pic) What about it? I still don't see what you're talking about. Well, look at it from above. OK...wait, how am I supposed to do that other than when I'm on a plane leaving this 120 degree heat factory and vacationing somewhere where my fingerprints haven't been melted off from starting my car and putting on my metal seat belt?
Here's a quote from nflfootballstadiums.com.
University of Phoenix Stadium delivers as the state of the art facility in the NFL and is an engineering masterpiece. It's exterior resembles that of a barrel cactus with metal paneling that reflects the hot desert sun, but it's shape takes styling cues from a coiled snake which is extremely unique.Wow, it took the genius minds of engineers to figure out how to make a football stadium look like a barrel cactus! I think an even more difficult feat would be to make a football stadium that doesn't look like a barrel cactus. And the snake? You mean that little protrusion that makes its (not it's, it's called possessive) way to the top of the stadium? These are, again, the "selling points" of the stadium nowadays. My guess is that they came up with the snake theory after the fact or I'm imaging some engineers looking at blue prints and some PR weenie eating a ham sandwich walks in and says Oooo it looks like a snake, as the engineers roll their eyes. "...a coiled snake which is extremely unique". What? Something in Phoenix that's desert themed? Are you serious?! I can't drive to a Circle K without passing "Yucca Apartments", "Desert Vista School", "Rattlesnake Elementary", or some other desert themed building/park/church whose name could've been pulled out of the "stupid things to name your Arizona institution" hat.
I'd photoshop an image of a barrel cactus and a coiled rattlesnaked superimposed but I think I'm doing enough blog cliches as it is...and I don't have photoshop so screw you.
Anyways, my rant has gone on long enough. I need to go to sleep. I don't apologize for how I feel about this stadium or the Cardinals and I can't respect anyone who makes their excitement for "Cardinal football" apparent at any point during the course of our friendship, not even my brother-in-law (sorry, Corey). I wanted to find the season statistics for the Cardinals since they've been in Phoenix so I could confirm or debunk my feeling that every year the Cardinals do semi-well in preseason which brings a lot of "Cards are looking good this year" from KTAR but invariably results in, "maybe next year."
Scalping ticket's isn't a bad way to get some extra cash. Voting against the stadium would've been a better way. Charging people $200 a night to stay at your house close to the stadium super bowl weekend is even better.
1 comment:
It's a giant grounded UFO if you ask me....
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