Arizona Cardinals: Desert Dreams, Decades of Disappointment (Ep. 33)

Welcome to Misery Sports Co. Oh, I’m so sorry. What was that? Trevor, I’m so sorry. AI is out of control right now. So sorry to all our listeners. This is misery Sports Co I’m Zach. And I’m I’m Trevor. How did that happen. I don’t it just you gave me the signal and I said I’m gonna take over. Oh my God. Super weird. Um, we got a jam packed show for you today. Episode thirty three sponsors that we’ve had previously that can’t not certain stuff. All right. That’s true. No it isn’t. Um, gonna have similar structure to what we’ve had in prior episodes. We’ll go through our weekly performance review, the mail room, we’ve got a deep dive for you and then a few more teams for our Misery Sports Index. But before we go to our weekly performance review, Trevor, who’s our first sponsor. Hello there, football fan. Are you excited for your beloved sport to return those crisp fall days full of hope and then pain, suffering, misery? Do you find yourself needing just one thing to turn your fortunes? One bounce to go your way? Well, now you can have the chance. With Doctor Paul Quigley’s fifty over fifty tickets, you’ll get a chance to get that precious call to go your way. But you’ll take on some risk only equal to the odds of your event happening. Do you need your team to win the coin toss? Well, that’s not so bad. Let’s go. Fifty over fifty. You win the toss. Or NFL star Jameis Winston gets a tummy ache for twenty minutes. Need the other team to get a called for a hold in the fourth quarter. Well that could cost you. Maybe you get the call. Maybe the bubbles that float around your vision will be twenty percent bigger for six months. You know, you’re gonna hate that, but you might get what you want. You’ll never know until you scratch. Doctor Paul Quigley’s fifty fifty tickets. Freaking Paul Quigley, man. He’s everywhere. He’s everywhere and nowhere and nowhere selling tickets. We appreciate the the sponsorship and the check. We are going to now jump into our weekly performance review. In this segment, we go across all different sports leagues. Could be our own teams that we have ownership in here at Missouri Sports Co could be teams that we’ve covered in some of our deep dives. Trevor what have you got for us this week. Well it’s still training camp time. Uh hope springs eternal everywhere. We’re going to go undefeated. It’s the greatest time of the year. Uh, it’s time for a very important check in, though. I just want to know. It’s called healthy. Healthy? Yeah. And he is. Hooray! Carnell Tate is healthy. He had a very nice back of the end zone toe tapping touchdown today. So, uh, we’re very thankful that Carnell Carnell Tate is still healthy. So really all good things coming from Titans camp. The NFL network goes around to each camp for a day. And they do little spots and they interview people. So it was really fun to hear Carnell Tate, cam Ward, Jeff Simmons a competent coaching staff, a coach that you would actually be intimidated by and want to follow, which is something new for us, at least in the past couple years. So all that’s going good. I did want to briefly stop down and discuss something with the Dallas Stars that I haven’t got to. That I think is kind of interesting. It’s kind of a fun wrinkle of sports negotiating if you’re into that thing. So I’ve mentioned Jason Robertson on the show before. He is a forward for the stars, great player. He’s a restricted free agent with the stars. And he. Was a fifty goal scorer very good forward. And we couldn’t work out an extension. And he thought he was worth more. The team thought he wasn’t fine. Right. We were. We’re offering him twelve million. He thought he was worth fifteen. Cool. Dude, bet on yourself. Go get your money. Whatever. He nixed a deal to get traded to the Kraken. Who have we? I don’t think we’ve talked about the Kraken on this. We haven’t. No. They will make our, uh, misery sports index. He nixed that trade. So he clearly wanted to be around. So we were going to a thing called arbitration. So here’s how arbitration works. If the team and the player can’t agree, then the collective bargaining agreement has this mechanism that brings in a supposedly independent third party to hear both sides and say, here’s what your contract should be. That sounds really boring. This whole process is kind of boring. But what happens is if you get to this date, it’s like, this is super uncomfortable and awkward. The team front office sits on one side of the table. The player sits on the other side of the table and in front of a judge. They argue for why their price should be better. So that involves the player saying, hey, I’m really good. Look at all these other teams paying their players. You should. I should be worth this much. And then the team goes and just craps on the player and is like, actually, no, remember you kind of sucked from like these dates to these dates. And we think really, you’re just part of this system that’s making you good. You’re not as good as this other player that we have. You’re not really as good as these other players around the league. That’s why we should pay you only this much money. It’s so painful and gross and awkward. And then once the judge says, okay, it’s this price, you’re just supposed to shake hands and be like, thanks judge. Let’s, let’s go have a great season. Really uncomfortable process. I couldn’t imagine going and playing for a team after going through that. Honestly, really, really awkward. Yeah, that’s a really strange approach. I don’t understand why it’s just not like restricted free agency, right? Like take the contract or find a team that’ll pay you and move on. Like, why is there a judge and all this stuff involved? It’s it is. It’s weird. It’s weird. Baseball has it too. Thankfully, a few days before, uh, before arbitration was supposed to happen, the stars and Jason Robertson agreed on a deal. And guess what? It’s a one year deal to get to be an unrestricted free agent. It’s a one year deal. Worth twelve million that we were offering him in the first place. So he’s clearly betting on himself to get a larger contract after this year. So good news is that the stars, I think, are going to get some really great hockey out of Jason Robertson, because if they don’t, he’s not getting paid like he thinks he will. Okay. And that’s all I got for this week. Well, on my end a lot of trades going on in Major League Baseball. So, uh, the Guardians have traded for several players. Um, I guess there’s a lot of hype going on right now. I can’t say that I’ve watched any games, but let them live. Um, looking around Major League Baseball, I know we’ve focused on some that have been struggling here at Misery Sports Co, but wanted to highlight the good, which obviously isn’t great for the Cubs. But the Milwaukee Brewers are seventy two and forty three. Yeah the best I think it’s the best record in Major League Baseball. It is. Yeah. Ahead of the Dodgers. Yeah the yeah no they are. Um so they’re doing well. Uh the Seattle Mariners are still in the hunt. They’re only three games back from the Houston Astros. So a couple of couple of bright spots here at Misery Sports Co. Um Browns. We are just full on preseason mode right now. Denzel Boston second round wide receiver looks like a stud. He’s jumping over everybody catching touches. Um Deshaun Watson went for seventeen for twenty for seven touchdowns in one practice. And for you said seven touchdowns. Yeah. So again we have to we have to add some context to this. We don’t know if it was red zone if he was on the five yard line. I don’t know. Trevor. They keep posting these stats and it’s like I don’t know how to read it and everybody overreacts. So yeah, he had a good day. Great job Deshaun. Please leave my team. Um yeah offense looks good. I think defense is going to be great. We resigned Denzel Ward to an extension. Grant Delpit who’s a great uh safety. So I mean they’re they’re continuing to build the pieces. Jared verse looks great from the Myles Garrett trade. Um Jared verse was rated the thirty fifth best player in the NFL in their top one hundred. So um, not a bad player. And he’s showing leadership. He’s leading the defense. And we got what three or four picks out of that deal. So it’s not looking too bad. Let’s go And today actually marks our first preseason game in the NFL. We got the Arizona Cardinals playing the Carolina Panthers right now and Misery Sports Co. We have dubbed it the Misery Sports Co Classic. It is a battle of the Titans. That’s right. That’s right. Hall of Fame game is always it sneaks up on you. I did not know that the Hall of Fame game was happening until literally earlier this morning. And it’s it’s some of the some of the football that you will ever watch. But gosh darn it it’s back baby. And we love it here. Yeah. There’s a lot of degenerate memes about people betting on this game. And it’s just like, this is not the game to place bets on. You gotta be a real sicko for that. Yeah. Well, before we jump into the mailroom, let’s hear from our next sponsor. Is your baseball team stuck with a superstar making three hundred million dollars Call the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodgers asset Acquisition Services will literally take anyone. MVP. Sure. Cy young winner. Why not your top three prospects? Package them together for a limited time. Trade us one all star, and we’ll pay them seven hundred million dollars deferred until the sun burns out. Dodgers asset acquisition Services if he has a pulse and a war over two point five will find room. They really will. I thank you, Dodgers. I clearly you have money to spend on sponsorships because you’re not paying your star players until like your ad said, the sun burns out, which is crazy that that’s legal and you can get away with it, but let them live, I guess. Yeah, it’s kind of awkward, right? Because we’re getting paid by Dodgers. But Misery Sports Co has a strong stance on this and we are totally against it. We need some parody up in this. I hate it yeah. Give us some players misery sports co teams and shareholders are struggling right now. Yeah. And guess what. Dodgers after you traded for Cy Young to match up with your other Cy Young and your MVP and stuff. How about you get your swept by the Cubs. Boo ya. How about that? It felt weird to have the entire country cheering on the Cubs, but gosh darn it, we swept them. Let’s go ride the wave, baby. Woo! All right, let’s jump into the mail room. I think that’s where the AI actually got out for the introduction. We’ve been using them a lot in the mail room. I’m not sure if the intern has a hold of it or not. We have Trevor check. We haven’t. We haven’t even paid him. We’re trying to clear some of these sponsorship checks, but what have you got in the mail room for us this week, Trevor? I frankly refuse to go down there. I just won’t do it. It’s disgusting. No, it’s. It’s trash. Definitely an OSHA violation. Uh, but don’t don’t call them. We’re not. I don’t think OSHA exists, but we’re not paying fines. But I don’t think it exists right now anyways. I’ve got two entries for us this week. Uh, one is like a really cool entry that I think is something we’ve talked about forever. And then, uh, a little audio to share. So I want to give a shout out with a mailroom entry runner up to Akron. Akron University is running their football program, is running a contest to where one lucky fan will literally get to be the offensive coordinator for the opening drive in their home opener. This is not a preseason. This is not a practice. You can script the first drive of a game and it’s just it’s just a drawing. Uh, as far as I can tell, Our. This is real. I really I think it’s genuinely real. And the memes that have come out from this is so great when it’s just like, hope the defense is ready to go up against infinity. Flea flickers and I’m calling all the way down the field and triple reverses. But we have been joking about letting fans call the offense forever, because sometimes when we watch our teams, that’s how it feels. That’s right. And sometimes the fans would be would do a better job. So we’ll see. We’ll see that first series how they do. Yep. Looking forward to it. That is their, uh, home opener against a team of their choosing. I don’t have more details for you on that. Uh, check it out from them. Uh, but my entry, um, this week is just a clip. Uh, Chris Ream, I guess, clipped this of Mike McDaniel, the former Dolphins head coach, the cool bro head coach who is now a coordinator with Jim Harbaugh and the Los Angeles Chargers. Uh, came in and this is how he started his press conference. Uh, yeah. Let’s say good and bad. I’m really excited to be here. Um, not excited that I’m completely unprepared for an indoor press conference as I’m wearing sunglasses inside. Take them off. He’s like, I don’t know. This is crazy, guys. I’m wearing sunglasses inside, and a beat reporter just says you could take them off. Is he baked like that? That was weird. He might be because you can’t see it, obviously. Uh, like if you watch the clip, he takes his glasses off, and then he squints his eyes like, oh, man, it’s too bright in here. And then he puts his glasses back on and everybody laughs. So the answer is probably yes. He’s probably for sure. He’s gone. But congrats to Mike McDaniel. You’re given. Uh, you’re given me. Yeah, I, I don’t know how that’s they’re both goobers in different ways. So we’ll see how that goes. What do you got, Zach? All right. I just have one submission. This is apparently Purdue just hired a new boy, Addy. And, uh, and his introductory press conference. This was scripted, by the way. This wasn’t, like, off the cuff. He’s reading something that I did not know that, um, here are his opening comments for the addy at Purdue. Every recruit, every current student athlete will hear this message repeatedly. We are here to win championships. If you don’t want to win championships, what are you talking about? That might be the dumbest thing I’ve heard from someone in like management in years. Trevor, Indiana just won the championship. I don’t know, like, what are you doing? This was the one year that you couldn’t say that. The one year there’s been, what, seventy, eighty years where they have they haven’t done anything you picked. Yes. The one championship year to say that, uh, that’s so bad. I know they have a good basketball team, but you can’t you can’t say that after Indiana wins a football championship and your football team sucks, right? And I mean, Purdue is good, but they haven’t won a basketball championship either. They haven’t done anything like I. Yep. Crazy. Absolutely crazy. Um we’ll see if he gets let go after that. That was terrible. That’s tough. That’s tough to watch. Well before we jump into our deep dive this week, Trevor who’s our next sponsor. Guess what? We bought this spot too. That’s right. Another reminder that what you need this season is Doctor Paul Quigley’s fifty over fifty ticket. Here’s one for all you Titans fans out there. All six of you sad sons of bitches listening. Do you need your quarterback to have two point three seconds to throw instead of the usual one point four? Well, that’ll cost you. Let’s go. Fifty fifty. You get the extra. Good God, it’s not even a full extra second. That’s so sad. Fifty fifty. You get the extra point nine seconds or one of your family members becomes a Colts fan, and they cult harder than you, Titan. What about you, Zachary? What would the Browns like next season. What’s something you want a playoff win? Okay. All right. That that could cost that could cost you big time. I thought you were going to go the opposite way and just say something super small. And you went like you went so far the other way that I, I, I have the calculator in front of me, Zach. And it’s just, it’s showing me dots and lines in the script. I don’t know, I don’t think there’s something that I can even calculate for that. I’m so sorry. Uh, I guess this is not for everybody. But that’s okay. Still, it’s a good product. It’s good for everybody. And you should definitely buy one. That’s right. Try them this fall. Doctor Quigley’s fifty fifty tickets. Wow. Thank you, Doctor Quigley. It, Uh, it was above my soul. The asking price to go to the playoffs and win a game. It didn’t even show up on their list. I couldn’t even, I couldn’t even accept the offer. I think because Doctor Quigley said that the Titans just wanted, like, half a second more. That’s more of the that’s more of the zone you were going to go in. And then you said a playoff win just broke the whole. Broke all the calculations, broke everything. Okay. Not a miracle worker. Got it. Small small details. Small details. I’m not a miracle worker. Zach, you can’t ask those things of me. They don’t work like that, Zach. Okay. All right. They didn’t pay for that. All right. Goodness. All right, let’s jump into this week’s deep dive. So each week we take a look at a sports team. Could be in North America. Could be around the world. We’ve been international recently. Yes we have. I’ve got the deep dive this week in honor of the Hall of Fame game. I am going to do a deep dive into none other than the Arizona Cardinals. Ooh, that’s a good one. That’s a good one. The Cardinals were founded in eighteen ninety eight in Chicago and joined the NFL in nineteen twenty. Did you know Trevor? The Cardinals are the oldest continuously run professional football franchise in the United States, along with the Chicago Bears? Fascinating. I did not know. So they started in Chicago, but also the Chicago Bears. Ah, yes, they were called the Morgan Athletic Club. It was just an athletic club, that’s all. Trevor just it’s just a little. We get together on Sundays. Not a big deal. Kind of a fun fact. They played at Wrigley Field in the thirties. That’s kind of cool. That’s cool. But they moved from Chicago to Saint Louis in nineteen sixty. Ton of confusion with the baseball team, the Saint Louis Cardinals. Oh yeah. Yeah, they were there for twenty eight years, and they ended up moving to Tempe, Arizona, where they played at Arizona State Sun Devil Stadium. Cool stadium. They were the Phoenix Cardinals from nineteen eighty eight to ninety three. And then they changed to the Arizona Cardinals. I swear I call them the Cardinals. I that’s a great question. I feel like when I was young I called them the Phoenix Cardinals. But I could be wrong. Yeah. Like in my head in the in the old Madden games, like in the old video games it’s Phoenix. But yeah. Yeah. I’m gonna say Phoenix is cooler than Arizona. Hot take. Should have stuck with Phoenix. Agreed. They won NFL championships in nineteen twenty five and nineteen forty seven before the merger. AFL, NFL merger. So it’s been a minute. Eighty, eighty years. Almost. Mhm. uh, one conference championship, if you can remember, they went to the Super Bowl against the Steelers in two thousand and eight. Yeah. Yeah, man. Honestly, they had a great chance. Yeah they did. Yeah. And the end of the half hurt so much. Yeah. That one hundred yard fumble return by James Harrison. Brutal. Um the players that I remember what I’m thinking about the Cardinals Larry Fitzgerald who just got inducted into the Hall of Fame. Carson Palmer who unfortunately got traded. Um actually did he end up going from the Bengals to the Cardinals or Cardinals to the Bengals? I can’t even remember. I think Bengals to Cardinals is my guess. Okay, so that was toward the tail end. Sorry, I’ve got a little a little cold. And Kurt Warner was definitely at the tail end of his career um, when he went to the Cardinals. But he had some, some good seasons, uh, since two thousand. Trevor. Only five playoff appearances and six winning seasons. And my goodness, when I look at their record since two thousand, they have their worse than the Browns. They have a forty two percent win percentage. Yeah forty two man. And for how great Larry Fitzgerald was, he deserved so much better than that. Absolutely. And, uh, they’ve just unfortunately had a lot of draft misses too. I mean, Josh Rosen recently as a QB, Josh, Josh Rosen, Kyler Murray, they just traded to the Vikings. Um, they drafted Carson Beck. We’ll see if he’s any good. He looked he looked decent in the Hall of Fame game. I mean can’t really read into it, but okay. We’ll see if the future is bright. They’ve got Jeremiah Love as well from Notre Dame. They just recently drafted. So yep, we’re pulling for him. But not a lot of, uh, bright shiny moments here in Arizona. No. And they’ve somehow put a curse or a hex. I don’t know if Doctor Quigley had anything to do with it, but have you seen the footage of Marvin Harrison Jr. Yeah. There is something. There is something wrong. Like, I don’t know if it’s like some kind of the yips or something, but like, the footage looks bad. He was an absolute stud at Ohio State. Thought he was a sure thing, uh, as a draft pick. And he it seems like he just keeps getting worse and worse. And the footage from camp, I don’t know if maybe if it’s like a 4D chess move, like somebody’ll, they’ll trade me and send me out. It’s so bad here. I want to go. But like, I feel for the guy, man. Yeah, I’ve watched some of that footage. Um, it’s tough, man. And they just haven’t had stability at quarterback. So you don’t know who’s throwing you the ball. Kyler Murray has not been accurate or consistent. And so as a wide receiver, I do think he got the yips and just a lack of confidence when you don’t know where the ball is coming and you know who’s throwing it to you, it’s tough to watch, man. Yeah. Well that is the Arizona Cardinals. A brief deep dive. Trevor. Beautiful. Before we jump into our Misery sports index, let’s go to our last sponsorship. Are you tired of dragging a step stool around the house, introducing bonbons every day? 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And dying in the John Wick movie. I mean, spoiler alert, pretty dope. I mean, it’s it’s like ten years ago, I don’t know, five years. Get around to it. All right, after tenet, I’ll watch some John Wick. Yeah. Tenet update for everybody who really wanted to know tenet watch. Tenet is not streamed anywhere. That doesn’t make any sense. No, it’s on like direct TV, something subscription that nobody has. Like it used to be like a staple every time I booted up HBO Max and be like, watch tenet and I’d have to tell it no. So I thought I was finally gonna click yes to the opt in. And sure enough, it’s just gone. Conspiracy theory. They’re burying that while they show the Odyssey. They don’t want anyone to know, hey, that’s a pretty good conspiracy theory. You might be onto something there. I think you’re right about that. All right, well, let’s jump to our final segment. So last week we provided some ratings. And this week we have been working on some proprietary technology. And we are excited to announce Misery Sports Co’s Misery Sports Index. So this is going to be an index that rates each of the teams. Thank you. Thank you. Applause. Thank you. Very nice. We’re going to provide numerical ratings to each of the teams. It is currently in process. We’re building it out on the website. We had to play some catch up. There’s about twenty five twenty six teams before we built this proprietary technology. Yep, that’s my bad. Didn’t have foresight, but um. We will have it on our website. We’re going to give out some ratings. And then we want to hear from listeners too. So we’re going to have an opportunity at our website. If you want to provide your own ratings and why you agree or disagree, give us a holler at misery sports dot com. So, Trevor, who are the teams that you covered this week? I’ve got two that I’d like to bring to the table. Uh, and they seem somewhat similar. So the first one all the way back in episode three, that was so, so very long ago, we briefly covered the Seattle Mariners. We had a great time talking about our day at Safeco Field. The Yeti was there. We were confused about the Canadian national anthem. It was a great time, and the Mariners are coming off a fabulous season where they made the ALCS. They almost beat the Blue Jays to get to the World Series. Would have had a good shot at winning the whole thing. So that does take away some points. Um, what the algorithm counts as the current performance adjustment. We do have to calculate for that. However, the fan suffering has been so extensive, their championship drought has been so severe. And we have those huge deserts where they’re just not making the playoffs. They’re watching Griffey go play for somebody else. They’re watching A-Rod go somewhere else. Mhm. That I’m still going to give the Seattle Mariners a solid sixty two on our Misery Sports Index. Okay. Let’s briefly talk about the Jaguars. Zach, I am a member of something called the a f c South meme page where we just roast each other because we are the cellar of the cellar dwellers when it comes to the NFL. And, uh, there was a, I don’t know, a, a voting system where you get to pick like the best, the worst, the wildest, the funniest moments for each of these teams and for the Jaguars and their fans can vote on this, by the way, and do vote on this. The best moment was when the Jaguars overcame like a twenty seven zero deficit. Do you remember that? Actually, we were watching this game together against the Chargers, against, uh, Herbert and the Chargers. And they came back and beat them in the playoffs, which is historic. I think it’s the biggest playoff comeback in NFL history, which is cool. But dude that was a divisional round game like that was. That’s their best moment is one time we set the record in the first round, and then the next week we got bounced. That’s as good as it got for them. So that’s that’s pretty miserable. You had to suffer the Urban Meyer stuff. You have had some terrible jerseys. See the mustard yellow stuff? Uh, definitely higher than the Mariners. I’m going to give the Jaguars a solid seventy six on the MSI. Okay. Thank you for sharing your results. Um, I have the Pittsburgh Pirates who we covered a couple episodes ago, haven’t won a World Series since nineteen seventy nine. Um, dysfunctional organization. They can’t they don’t get many good players. They don’t keep them. And unfortunately, the fans suffering is, is rough. It’s one of the highest. There’s not been a lot of good performance. Currently, I’m giving them an eighty two out of one hundred. One of our higher ratings indeed. I also covered the Saint Kilda Football Club going international. Uh, haven’t won a championship since nineteen sixty six twenty seven. Last place finishes in the league. Oof! That is tough. Um, I give them a seventy two out of one hundred right now. Okay, okay. Um, so some pretty strong ratings. They are. They’re up there. Uh, I think as a reminder, I think the highest score we’ve given out so far are correct me if I’m wrong, the Charlotte Hornets are at the top. Is that still correct? Yes, they are in the nineties. Um ninety three out of one hundred. Um we are still we’ve still got a few episodes that we’re covering. We still got to do the Browns and the Titans. We’ll see where they fall. Oh boy. I’m going to be a little biased on that one. It’s going to be a big score. It’s going to be a big score. Well, we were working to get that up and running. The Misery Sports Index. You can follow us at w w w dot sports dot com. Do not put the fourth W in there. You will miss our page. Only three. And thus concludes another episode here at Misery Sports Co. Thank you so much for listening. Give us a like and subscribe a follow wherever you listen to this Apple Spotify YouTube Pocketcasts. We’re also on X. Give us a follow a like a subscription. I’m Zach and I’m Trevor reminding you that misery loves company. See you next time.