Footballs fans quickly jumping on the Cardinals' bandwagon

TEMPE, Ariz. -- It was no surprise that a large number of souvenir hunters were browsing through an assortment of T-shirts and baseball caps at The Cap Company here on Monday afternoon.

After all, the so-called Super Bowl of college football, the Fiesta Bowl matchup featuring No. 1 Tennessee and No. 2 Florida State, was going to kick off about two hours later a couple of blocks away at Sun Devil Stadium. And the sidewalks on nearby Mill Avenue were flooded with boosters of both the Vols and Seminoles.

But what was surprising was the merchandise that many of the fans were electing to buy.

Sure, the official Fiesta Bowl hats and T-shirts were big sellers. But the hot item this afternoon was a T-shirt featuring Arizona Cardinals quarterback Jake "The Snake" Plummer on the front and, in big block letters on the back, "Cardinals 20, Cowboys 7 ... January 2, 1999."

Here's the kicker. The Cardinals shirts were priced at $16.95. The Fiesta Bowl shirts were available at $9.95.

"Surprisingly, we've had a lot of action today on Cardinals stuff," said The Cap Company manager Tim Soukop. "With all the people here for the game, it's surprising people would battle the traffic to come down here today to get Cardinals stuff. But they have."

Arizona's stunning upset of Dallas on Saturday did the unthinkable. It pushed the Fiesta Bowl below the fold on the front page. In fact, almost two-thirds of the front page of Sunday's Arizona Republic was devoted not to the Fiesta Bowl or Bill Clinton's woes or the brutal weather hitting the Midwest and East, but to the Cardinals' first playoff win since 1947.

"Texas-size upset," read the banner headline across the top of page A-1.

An estimated 5,000 people greeted the team Saturday night at Sky Harbor Airport. A team that normally has had trouble filling half the stadium for its home games since moving to Tempe from St. Louis 11 years ago has taken the Phoenix area by storm, thanks to its NFC wild card win over the Cowboys.

One shudders to think what will happen if Arizona, a 15-point underdog, could somehow pull off another upset on Sunday at Minnesota.

The big loser in this equation was the Fiesta Bowl. More than 90 percent of the calls on local sports talk shows Sunday, Monday and Tuesday centered on the Cardinals.

If one didn't know better, you would have thought the Fiesta Bowl was being played on Mars, not in Sun Devil Stadium.

"The Cardinals are all the people in town want to talk about now," said Tony Femino, who hosts a popular sports call-in show on KMVP-AM.

"The win over the Cowboys really got it going. Dallas was the team that always beat them over the years. And before the Cardinals moved here 11 years ago, this was a Cowboys' town. All their games would be piped in here every Sunday."

Femino, in his fifth year of hosting a sports talk show in Phoenix, thought the Cardinals' hysteria this week even surpassed the amount of hoopla surrounding Arizona State's 1997 Rose Bowl appearance.

"I think this might be a little bigger," he said. "ASU's trip to the Rose Bowl was real big, too. But I don't remember 5,000 people showing up at the airport to greet them."

Suddenly, it's hip to be a Cardinals fan in Phoenix.

"It's kind of nice," Soukop said. "It used to be depressing to listen to sports talk radio about the Cardinals around here. It was always, 'The owner doesn't spend the money' or 'The team isn't any good.' And who wants to listen to that each day?

"Since the Cardinals started getting hot lately, there have been a lot of extra bandwagon fans," Soukop continued. "I hope they stay on the bandwagon now. I think they will."

If they do, it will be good news for souvenir stores like The Cap Company. Soukop estimated that sales of Cardinals merchandise has gone up "about 60 percent" in the last couple of weeks.

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