So, the Arizona Cardinals are one game away from winning a championship.  Who would have thunk it?  Anyone predicting this back in August would have been asked to pee in a cup and perhaps seek counseling.

The Cardinals have long been an NFL doormat, a free spot on the NFL bingo board.  When you went through your team's schedule during the pre-season and saw they have a date with the Cardinals, you'd automatically chalk it up in the win column for your team. 

Suddenly, the Cardinals are no longer a punch line.

What has made the Cardinals, a team which hasn't won a championship since 1947 (when they were the Chicago Cardinals) such a joke? Ownership.  Perhaps the worst ownership in the history of organized sports.  Ownership right up there with Bill Wirtz, P.K. Wrigley and Donald Sterling.  This was a team that at one point pinned it's hopes on Bud Wilkinson, the legendary Oklahoma head coach who had been out of football for fifteen years before accepting the Cardinals job. This is a team that has had such well known coaching names such as Buddy Ryan, Vince Tobin, Dave McGinniss and Dennis Green try to pull the sword from the stone and fail, often miserably.  This is a franchise that had won exactly one playoff game in 60 years prior to this year.

And now, suddenly, they are headed to the Super Bowl.

The team has been owned since 1932 by the Bidwell family.  At one point, during world war two, they merged with the Steelers and were known as Card-Pitt (I do not jest, the Steelers also merged for a year with the Eagles.)  This is a team that left Chicago for St. Louis in 1960 and refused to change its' nickname.  This is a team that took off for Arizona in 1988, first as the Phoenix and then as the Arizona Cardinals. This is a team that was so bad, fans in their new environment stopped showing up and almost caused them to set sail again. 

While George Halas, P.K. Wrigley and Bill Wirtz were much maligned in their home city, it was the Bidwell's who set the standard for "the Chicago way."  To say that this organization was cheap was an understatement.  And, if you were drafted by the Cardinals you either got a career ending injury or escaped at the first opportunity possible.  This was the sports equivalent of hell.

And now, suddenly, they are headed to the Super Bowl.

The moral of  our story is even a blind, cognitively delayed squirrel finds an acorn once in awhile.  Now that Bill Bidwell is pretty much retired and his sons are running the team, the team's fortunes have finally improved.  Much like the Blackhawks following the demise of Dollar Bill or the Bears immediately following the death of George Halas (although the Bears regressed badly, especially when Michael McCaskey ran things.)  Hope springs eternal for any franchise willing to bring itself into the 21st century and be serious about competing. 

One must wonder if the cosmic tumblers are aligned to send the Cardinals to the Super Bowl, might they also be ready to give the Hawks the Stanley Cup we've been waiting for since 1961? And yes, perhaps, even grant Cub fans their holy grail (you know, the one we Sox fans got in 2005.)

Add all this to tomorrow's historical inauguration and this could be one interesting year.