DALLAS.  With skyrocketing player salaries and rising materials costs undermining their ability to build state-of-the stadiums, owners of professional sports teams find themselves between a rock and a hard place these days.  "It used to be we could look to the state or the city for a little something to cover infrastructure," says Cowboys' owner Jerry Jones.  "Now they tell us they've gone and blown all their money on stupid stuff like schools, firemen and policemen, and we're left high and dry."  

Texas Stadium:  "Hey--I was sitting there!"

So Jones, who had already imposed "personal seat licenses" on long-time fans which, for as much as $150,000, merely give them the right to buy season tickets, came up with the idea of the "personal butt license" to cover his funding gap.  "The seat license gives you the right to buy the ticket to the seat," says Martin Zimwurtz, an economist who studies professional sports because it's more fun than poverty.  "The butt license gives you the right to put your fanny in the seat that is licensed to you."

"Dude--I got a personal body paint license!"

Other teams with new stadiums on the drawing board are looking closely at the Cowboys' move, and considering other add-on fees of their own.  "Many of our fans like to touch inappropriate parts of their bodies while the TV cameras are scanning the stands," says New York Giants' co-owner John Mara.  "That depresses our advertising revenues, so people are going to have to 'pay to pick' if they want us to win another Super Bowl."

In Arizona, where the football Cardinals just moved into the University of Phoenix and Mel's Weed-Wacker Supply Stadium, patrons can upgrade to body odor-free seats for a one-time Air Wick Room De-odorizer charge.

"A lot of our fans get kinda sweaty on the long walk from the parking lot to their seats, so we're putting six-foot room de-odorizers in designated VIP seating sections," says Arthur Bidwill, Vice President of Nepotism for the team.  "The addition of these fine Air Wick products will not interfere with play on the field, where our team always stinks."

KING CITY, Mo.  In this small town in northwestern Missouri, breeding animals is a way of life.  "My daddy bred jackalopes," says Ernest "Woody" Fredrick, referring to the cross between a jackrabbit and an antelope that is rarely seen outside of the Midwest.  "But what Wehrli Farms is doing is something new."

Roger Wehrli

Fredrick is referring to an experiment currently being conducted by Roger Wehrli, a Hall of Fame defensive back for the University of Missouri Tigers and the NFL's Cardinals when they played in St. Louis, and one of the last, great white cornerbacks.  "He may fail," says Oren Daily, Jr., a professor of animal husbandry at the University of Missouri's Rolla campus.  "But when an animal faces extinction, you've got to do something."

Wehrli Farms

Cornerbacks breed without difficulty in nature, often producing children by cheerleaders and other exotic species.  "In captivity, it's a different story," says Daily.  "They get all skittish if they can't roam from one bar to another, or at least nibble on a sideline reporter during a game."

4H Club:  "Next year I'm gonna raise me a cornerback with a quick first step to the ball."

So the prospects for success are not great, but the Wehrlis, in cooperation with the Missouri Department of Agriculture's Extension Service, have brought three white high school cornerbacks to their farm for breeding purposes, mating them to leggy young girls provided by the John Alston Modeling Agency of Kansas City.

"These are the same girls you see modeling fashion undergarments in regional newspapers," Daily says.  "They've been chosen for their low body fat, and their willingness to slap you silly if you try to run a crossing route through their push-up bras."

Jason Sehorn

The last white cornerback in the NFL was Jason Sehorn, who played for the New York Giants before a knee injury ended his career.  Sehorn has only one son, and environmentalists have become concerned that "The Species"--as Sehorn was known during his playing days--may die out if breeding in captivity fails.

"There is a 15-yard penalty on the offense for excessive celebration."

"Perhaps we've been focusing too much on baby seals and whales," concedes Evan Winslow of the Sierra Club.  "I've never seen a whale master the Cover 2 defense."

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman

PHOENIX, Arizona.  "Sparky", the tabby cat who was the Arizona Cardinals' mascot, was killed yesterday by a golf cart driven by special teams coordinator Gary Zauner.

"This is a sad day for the entire Cardinals family," said owner Bill Bidwill as members of the team's cheerleading squad sobbed quietly behind him.  "Sparky was a real pro, alway doing his business in the kitty box, never on the field."

Sparky became the team mascot in 1999, after eating the team's previous mascot "Birdman", a cardinal that was kept in a cage behind the team's bench.  "Somebody left the door unlatched one day and Sparky did what cats do to birds," according to defensive line coach Larry Brooks.  "He shot in through the gap and sacked him."

Bidwill, the notoriously tight-fisted owner of the team, refused to spend money on a new mascot, and closed the cage door behind the cat, effectively pressing him into service.  "That cat cost me an investment in the high two figures we had spent on that dumb bird over the years--I made him pay for it."

Larry Wilson, inventor of the safety blitz:  "Bidwill wouldn't pay me, so I took it out on the other team."

The Cardinals are the oldest American professional football franchise, and the least successful.  They have moved twice since being founded in Chicago in 1898, in each case escaping the rage of indifferent fans who gather at local airports to express sympathy for fans in the team's next destination.

Sparky became a fan favorite as he developed routines to reflect the action on the field, according to "Jen", a member of the Cardinals' cheerleading squad who was close to the cat.  "When we'd get a field goal, he'd stick his little paws up in the air to show it was good," she recalled.

"Block that kick!"

"When we'd score a touchdown, he'd walk past the cheerleaders and give each of us a high five," she said, fighting back tears.

And what, a reporter asked Jen, would Sparky do if the Cardinals had a winning season?

"I don't know--we only had him for eight years."

PHOENIX, Arizona. An explosion rocked Phoenix this morning after Arizona Cardinals' owner William V. Bidwill caused Sun Devil Stadium to be demolished in the erroneous belief that he owned it.

Bidwill:  "I own the Royals?  They suck too."

The stadium is owned by Arizona State University and is the home field of that school's football team, as well as the site of the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. The Cardinals played there from 1998 to 2005, but moved to a newly-constructed stadium last month.

Green:  "I'll explain it at my next press conference."

Cardinals coach Dennis Green expressed regret when informed of the mistake. "Wow--that's a doozy. I hope we have insurance."

"Sorry--I couldn't hear you.  Did you say 'Wait a minute!'?"

Major league teams often destroy their former home fields when they build a new stadium said Janice McNeil of HOK Architecture, the firm that designed Baltimore's Camden Yards. "You should always make sure you have the deed to the stadium when you blow it up," she cautioned. "I tell my clients to put that at the tippy-top of the list of things to check before they push the little red button on the detonator."

Bidwill, managing general partner of the team, promised that ASU would be reimbursed for the damage. "I don't know why they're making such a big deal out of it," he said. "The place was a dump."

John David Crow, former Cardinals running back:  "Bidwill still owes me meal money."

The Cardinals are the oldest continuously-operated pro football franchise in America, and the most inept. The team traces its lineage back to 1898, when it was formed as the Morgan Athletic Club. It was known for a time as the Racine, Wisconsin Normals, and took the name "Cardinals" in 1901 when it received a set of used University of Chicago jerseys whose trademark maroon coloring had faded to red.

Since adopting the Cardinal as their mascot, the team has played in and fled from fans in Chicago and St. Louis before moving to Phoenix in 1988. In 107 years of competition the Cardinals have finished at the top of the standings only twice, first in 1925 by virtue of having the league's best record (NFL postseason play did not begin until 1933) and the last  in 1947 when they defeated the Philadelphia Eagles 28-21 in the NFL Championship Game.

Boldin:  "Throw the freakin' bean bag!"

Cardinals' wide receiver Anquan Boldin was outraged when he learned that the Detroit Lions had been voted the worst NFL franchise of all time in a recent on-line poll. "Just shows you there's a lot of ignorant people on the internet," he said, noting that the Cardinals' all-time won-lost percentage of .414 was much worse than the Lions' .476. He urged Cardinals' coach Green to "Throw the freakin' bean bag and challenge the call!"

Copyright 2006, Con Chapman

PHOENIX, Arizona. The United States Postal Service has bowed to pressure from Arizona Cardinals fans, agreeing Friday to assign a separate zip code to the team's mammoth rookie, Taitusi "Deuce" Lutui.

Lutui:  "Stay away from the buffet--it's mine."

"In terms of size alone, Lutui is bigger than certain counties in Rhode Island and rural free delivery routes in Missouri, so we caved," said U.S. Postmaster General John E. Potter.

Bigger than Hazard, Nebraska.

"This is the Post Office--we have a lot of time on our hands," he added, "what with not delivering your mail and coming up with goofy stamp designs."

Lutui was an All-American guard for the Trojans of the University of Southern California, where at 370 pounds he was the heaviest player in the school's history. He was invited to rush the Sigma Nu fraternity but declined after learning that their dining hall was not large enough to hold him.

Sigma Nu: Not big enough.

A second-round pick in last year's NFL college draft, Lutui was nonetheless one of the first players from the class of 2006 to be honored with an entry in Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia. "Somebody put his bio up right after he was drafted," said Wikipedia chief information officer A.J. Turner, "but the site crashed when our servers couldn't handle his weight."

Lutui was born in Ha'api, Tonga. His name is an anagram for "Suiti tutu lait", a greeting in the native tongue of his Polynesian homeland that means "I wish to wear your sister's tutu."

Copyright 2006, Con Chapman

Boston Herald: The Tampa Bay Devil Rays are considering a change in the team's name.

TAMPA, Florida.  New Tampa Bay Devil Rays' owner Stuart Sternberg hit a nerve when he announced Friday that he planned to change the team's name, the first such change in the name of an MLB team that wasn't also changing cities since the Houston Colt .45s became the Astros in 1961.

The name "Devil Rays" is "associated with losing," said Britt Beemer, chairman of American Research Group, a pro sports marketing research group, a sentiment echoed by Mark Ferguson, owner of Ferg's Sports Bar & Grill near the team's ballpark.  "There's too much negativity around 'devil'," he said.

In a sort of domino-theory of sports team names, fans across the country rushed to phones and computers to urge local owners to change the names of their perennial losers.  Cable and phone providers noted the highest volume of queries from the following regions:

Phoenix:  There aren't many Cardinals in Arizona, and the football Cardinals have the worst won-loss percentage in NFL history.  "Gila Monsters, Road Runners--anything but 'Cardinals'," said long-suffering fan Andy Bakersfield.  The Cardinals abandoned Chicago and St. Louis before they moved to Phoenix, and no one was ever sorry to see them go.

Kansas City:  There's nothing royal about the Royals, and until major league baseball adopts true revenue-sharing, there never will be.  The name "Royal" comes from the name of annual livestock show when 3,000 head of cattle, sheep, goats and hogs come into a major metropolitan area, fouling the air in upscale sidewalk cafes in the Country Club Plaza area.  "I was trying to impress a girl from out of town with my knowledge of French films," said would-be urban sophisticate Evan Wilensky of Overland Park, Kansas, "when the wind shifted and an odor like the farts of a 1,000 sows wafted over our vanilla lattes.  All I could say was 'It wasn't me,' but it was too late.  And I can't get the smell out of my beret."

Chicago:  "The 'Black' part of 'Blackhawks' is too negative," claims hockey nut Jerry LoPresti, a Blackhawks season ticket holder for seven dismal years.  "If they were just the 'Hawks', maybe they'd move to Atlanta."

Copyright 2006, Con Chapman

ORLANDO, Florida.  General managers from around the NFL sat through a two-hour video presentation here yesterday as the league's supervisor of officials explained pro football's new limits on excessive endzone celebrations after touchdowns.

"The two words you have to remember are 'tasteful and proportionate'," Mike Pereira said to a roomful of executives who were relieved to be done with an earlier session on "down by contact" calls. 

"By tasteful, I mean that which conforms to recognized standards of aesthetic expression," he explained as retiring commissioner Paul Tagliabue stood watching from the back of the meeting room.   "No butt-wiggling," he said when a representative of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers asked him to be more specific.

The issue of proportionality will be a judgment call, Pereira indicated.  "If Indianapolis is up by three touchdowns with two minutes left, I don't want to see anybody on the Colts doing a St. Vitus Dance if James Mungro scores on a one-yard plunge," he said.  "On the other hand, anytime the Arizona Cardinals score you expect them to go a little nuts."

Some present at the meeting said they would seek professional assistance in guiding players through the new rules, which forbid the use of props such as the Sharpie pen Terrell Owens used to autograph a ball after he caught a touchdown pass.  "We hired a mime coach--Jean-Claude something-or-other.  He's going to show the guys how to work without props," said Cleveland head coach Romeo Crennel. 

The New York Giants said they have put Tina Farnsworth of the American Ballet Theatre on retainer to teach players how to express themselves in a tasteful manner.  "Tiki Barber is progressing nicely," she said.  "I have taught him how to perform le plie, le rond de jambe and le releve.  Now if you will excuse me, I must eat mon chef boyardee."

The NFL has been criticized as the "No Fun League" for its crackdown on endzone celebrations, but Tagliabue said the new rules were nothing more than a way to keep advertisers happy.  "If we play our cards right, someday a pro football telecast will be as boring as Masterpiece Theatre," he said.  "In the case of the Houston Texans, we're already there."

Copyright 2006, Con Chapman