Soooper Bowl

The Arizona Cardinals in the Super Bowl. Unbelievable. The list of teams who have never been to the Super Bowl is shrinking. Hmm, that would be: New Orleans, Detroit, Cleveland Browns (more on that) Jacksonville and Houston. Considering that the Cardinals have been the most inept franchise over the past 60 years, well, I would have picked anyone else on the list to have made it to the Super Bowl before the Cardinals.

New Orleans has been pretty bad, but they have been to the playoffs quite a few times over the last 20 years. They don't quite seem to be the hapless franchise they were when Archie Manning was their QB. Their lack of success was by no means a slight on Archie. He made a couple of Pro Bowls, despite the miasma of the rest of the team.

While Detroit has made it to the record books for over more nefarious reasons of late, they do have some history. Ancient history, but history none the less. They played in four championship games and won three in the 50's. Interesting enough, all four of those games were played against the Cleveland Browns. The real Cleveland Browns-more on that in a moment. Anyhow, they have made the playoffs nine times since their last championship season (1957). However, they only have one playoff victory, and no Super Bowl.

Cleveland/Baltimore has some history too. They had some great success in the late 40's though early 60's. Cleveland Browns--you know, the team that resides in Baltimore now and calls itself the Ravens. The present Cleveland Browns are an expansion team and like Jacksonville and Houston, don't have enough history behind them to worry yet.

I did not think the Cardinals had a chance against Atlanta or Carolina, and they handled them both pretty easily. I think if Philly had woken up a little earlier yesterday, they might be in the big game themselves. However, when my teams are staying home, it is nice to have a decided underdog to pull for. It will be nice if the game is close along the nature of the past ten years, and not a boring rout, ala the Super Bowls of the late 80's through the 90's.

In the 1970's, when Pittsburgh first made the playoffs, much less the big game, hey had a track record for futility much like that of the Cardinals, maybe even worse. They beat the Vikings in their first Superbowl, and have never looked back since. No way the Cardinals win. . .but if they did, it would kind of be poetic to do against a team that was once as inept as they.