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Throwdown: Bucs vs. Cardinals

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TBO.com

Published: November 1, 2007

Each week during the season, The Tampa Tribune will challenge a columnist from the Bucs' opposing city to a Throwdown, to determine the superior city - and which team will come out ahead. This week's Throwdown features the Tribune's Martin Fennelly against Dan Bickley of The Arizona Republic. (Who's the winner? Be sure to vote, and to comment below).

Bucs: But Do They Have A Mascot?

Martin Fennelly, The Tampa Tribune

We'll take our old quarterback over your old quarterback. We'll take our history over your history. And we don't care how many University of Phoenix Stadium graduates come out of the woodwork, we'll take our playful murderers-at-sea pirate ship and Super Bowl host state over yours.

That last item seems especially relevant, seeing as Phoenix hosts the upcoming Super Bowl and Tampa hosts the big game next season.

Who can forget the first time Arizona was to host the Bowl, back in the 1995 season, a few years after their first Bowl was scuttled when the NFL learned the halftime show was 100 high school bands and the musical question, ''Martin Luther King Day - What's the Big Deal?''

Granted, Dr. King's holiday is now recognized even in Arizona. Granted, Florida played for the losing team in the Civil War (''You can't stop Grant and Sherman; you can only hope to contain them.'') and a Tampa mall once closed early because it feared its neighbor next door, the annual Florida Classic football game between Florida A&M and Bethune-Cookman. But we have Whitney Houston, pre-dried-out hag, lip-syncing to our troops in the greatest Super Bowl moment ever.

You have University of Phoenix Stadium.

Who's on the schedule for the University of Phoenix this week, traditional rival Phoenix State?

Where were we?

Ah, yes, back to this week's game. Let the Patriots and Colts - overrated, overrated - play in Indianapolis. It's the 3-4 Cardinals vs. the 4-4 Bucs.

In other words ... it's on.

Bucs-Cardinals has long been a delicious matchup, producing some of the worst football known to man, including the remarkable 7-3 Arizona win in the final game of 1992, as well as the pulsating 12-7 Cardinals win to end the 2004 season. Something about Bucs-Cards just says The End, doesn't it?

Now comes a mid-season clash.

We'll take the Bucs this Sunday.

And Bucs history any day.

Yes, we'll take even the Hugh Culverhouse Bucs over the 75-year Bidwellian epic that is Cardinals history.

Even forgetting the fact the Bucs have actually won a Super Bowl, the Cardinals top the Bucs, because the Cardinals have been passed down from generation to generation, zip code to zip code, time zone to time zone.

The Cardinals were once the Chicago Cardinals, the St. Louis Cardinals and now they're the Arizona Cardinals. That's three different metropolitan areas infected for one franchise.

In fairness, the Cardinals won the NFL title 60 years ago. Since then, the Cardinals have one playoff win in 59 years - one. In the 75 years of Bidwell ownership - Bronco Bill has run the club the last 25 - the Cardinals have made seven postseason appearances, seven into 75.

Compare that to nine Bucs postseason appearances since they joined the living in 1976, which, by the way, is the same year the University of Phoenix was born. The university bills itself as the ''largest private school in North America'' with ''nearly 200 convenient locations'' as well as ''Internet delivery in most countries around the world.''

(Word is drop/add day is a mess along the Afghan-Pakistan border)

All that being said, our Mr. C probably still beats your Mr. B - unless of course, your Mr. B dies one day and his widow wishes she could pull him put of the grave so she can shoot him. Then ... it's on.

Back to the game. The Bucs need to win to prevent a three-game skid and hop back aboard in the somebody-has-to-finish first NFC South.

The Cards could also use a win today, because the Seahawks seem just as unwilling to pull away in the NFC West.

Something's got to give.

I figure Kurt Warner will.

Love Edge James and the young receivers - what are those? - but the Bucs always had pretty good days against Warner, even when he was in St. Louis leading the post-Cardinals Rams to Super Bowls. In four games against the Bucs between 1999 to 2002, Warner threw four TDs and 12 INTs.

These are not those Bucs, but Warner might be that Warner, and that should be enough, provided his Tampa counterpart, Jeff Garcia, plays like he did in the season's first six games instead of the last two. We say Garcia turns it around, and so do the Bucs.

By the way, the Tampa 2009 Super Bowl effort is in full swing. Proposed theme for week: ''Whitney Houston: I'm Clean and I'm Back!'' Put that in your University of 200 Convenient Locations Stadium and smoke it.

Bucs 20, Cardinals 17.

Cardinals: No Cheap Imitations Here

DAN BICKLEY, The Arizona Republic

Back in the dark age of desert sports, only team employees and certified lunatics would've carried a flag for the Arizona Cardinals.

For decades, they've been the worst franchise in professional sports. Defending them was like handing Gen. Patton a water pistol. No sane journalist would've dared talk smack on their behalf.

But things have changed around here. We're feeling a little mouthy.

We've got Dennis Erickson, Brandon Webb, Steve Nash and the WNBA champion Mercury.

Don't laugh. Our girls would beat your NBA team.

But even if we're still a long way from Title Town, the trick is in picking the right battle. And no matter how bad we are, you're still Tampa.

You have three professional sports, a terrible baseball stadium and a really big bridge. Tampa is not exactly New York, although Tampa is where Joe Torre goes to get fired.

This is a matchup we can handle.

Now, none of this rant is meant for the fine people of Florida. I've enjoyed far too many wave runners and rum runners over the years to make this personal. I've discovered the three words that will make any man's heart smile (Mons Never Mind). And on behalf of everyone in Arizona, we thank your entire state for spawning specimens like Edgerrin James, Anquan Boldin and Amare Stoudemire.

But up in Tampa, the sports teams are a little on the sorry side.

Take baseball, for instance. We came in to the game the same time, as expansion teams in 1998.

Yet we came blazing, with Jerry Colangelo and a team that won a World Series in Year 4, a team that has won four division titles in its first decade of existence. You unveiled Vincent Naimoli, a tilted ballpark, and a team that still hasn't won 70 games in a single season.

Now you're changing the logo and the color scheme of the entire team?

Been there, done that. Or maybe you didn't notice the new Sedona Red on display in the 2007 Major League Baseball postseason.

Of course, you'll eventually point to your Super Bowl championship a few years back, and then direct our attention to your Stanley Cup trophy in the corner. Truth be told, you had to rely on us and our leftovers - Simeon Rice, Michael Pittman, Nikolai Khabibulin - to make it happen.

And that's the other thing. While the pirate ship in the football stadium is pretty unique and you can boast of having Luis Gonzalez long before we did, your teams tend to copy a lot of our ideas. Like Thomas Jones. Or Jake Plummer. Or Hugh Culverhouse, who was doing a really good impression of Bill Bidwill before he died.

But our football team has changed. They're a feisty group now, well-coached, tricky and highly competitive. These Cardinals are actually aiming for the playoffs, even with a 3-4 record and a one-armed quarterback.

So pay attention come Sunday, a day when we'll give you the Birds.

These might actually fly.

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