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!"
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."
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
