PFT: Cardinals, Fiesta Bowl Facing A Conflict

[WoodysGirl]

Posted by Aaron Wilson on April 19, 2009, 11:58 a.m.

The Arizona Cardinals have apologized to Fiesta Bowl officials after forgetting to file a scheduling concern with the NFL while they were busy preparing for the Super Bowl, an oversight that now has the Cardinals playing the Green Bay Packers at home Jan. 3 one day before the bowl game.

According to Craig Harris of the Arizona Republic, the contract between the Fiesta Bowl and the local NFL franchise specifies that the Cardinals can’t play a regular-season game within two days of the bowl game. The NFL has informed the Cardinals that it has no plans to change the schedule.

“It’s more than a huge concern,” Fiesta Bowl chief executive John Junker told the Republic. “It is devastating.”

Per the report, the Cardinals have met with bowl officials with no compromise reached at this point.

“We dropped the ball on this,” Cardinals team spokesman Mark Dalton acknowledged. “We should have known about it, and we didn’t. Now, the question is what can we do to make this a workable solution.”

The report describes a “tense situation.”

A potential lawsuit against the Cardinals is being considered.

“While we are not threatening to take any action, we have to represent the long-term interest of our enterprise,” Junker said.

 

[kmp77]

Way to go boneheads!

 

[jobberone]

Now why can't the NFL swap a time for the game to say Thur. Or they will have to make it a home game for the Packers.

 

[Biggems]

In defense of the Cardinals front office.....they are not used to post season play....so they are not used to having to deal with the team playing that late into the year while making decisions and filing paperwork. I am sure the front office was on cloud 9.......as high as a group of hippies on shrooms until after the SB.

 

[CowboyMike]

The Cards should swallow their mistake and play that game in Sun Devil Stadium or something.

 

[DWhite Fan]

Now why can't the NFL swap a time for the game to say Thur. Or they will have to make it a home game for the Packers.

They could play the game in Green Bay and designate the Cardinals as the home team kinda like the Saints in New York a few years back

 

[notherbob]

How would a real football game a day before a meaningless post-season college exhibition game matter, anyway? After all, it's not as though there were a legitimate playoff in NCAA football where the games mattered, the bowl games determine nothing, only the effeminate sports writers decide who to give the mythical championship to anyway and they can vote for whichever team they feel loyalty to.

According to the NCAA's preferences it is not up to the players, but only the writers and the bowl committees, anyway.

I quit watching college ball decades ago and will not watch anymore until they trash their ridiculous current system and institute a real playoff. The NCAA is more loyal to a handful of millionaires running the bowls than to the entirety of college football fandom. Screw 'em.

Don't ask me how I really feel about the NCAA and the backstabbing 2-digit IQ idiots who run it, you'll get an earfull. I have a hard time understanding how any of those fools ever even got into college, much less graduated. They're even dumber than the average college football player. Unfortunately, Cards management doesn't seem to be any sharper.

Where's my coffee? I need my coffee.

A morning without coffee is like a college football season without a championship playoff - incomplete.

 

[WoodysGirl]

Fiesta Bowl Should Shut Up, And Cardinals Should Pay Up
Posted by Mike Florio on April 19, 2009, 12:53 p.m.

I’ve got several takes regarding the news that the Cardinals are scheduled to host a home game the day before their home stadium hosts the Vandelay Industries Fiesta Bowl.

So, here they are.

First, the fact that the Cardinals failed to request that they not be scheduled for a home game on January 3 supports our view that the team’s blind-squirrel routine in the 2008 playoffs doesn’t mean that the chronically mediocre club suddenly has unlocked the mysteries of becoming a high-end franchise.

Second, the folks who run the Fiesta Bowl foolishly assumed otherwise, since common sense would have suggested that the Cardinals have been a bit preoccupied by the unexpected postseason run, a Super Bowl berth, the exodus and termination of assistant coaches, a hushed-up controversy regarding the failure to pay the former assistant coaches their full postseason shares, the Kurt Warner free-agency fiasco, and the lingering Anquan Boldin conundrum.

Third, the fact that the Cardinals could have requested that they not have a Week Seventeen home game confirms the reality that teams can — and do — attempt to engineer the contours of their schedule. And so to the extent that our pal Angelo Cataldi and his comrades at the WIP morning show think it’s possible that the Eagles asked the league to bury Brian Dawkins’ return visit as a member of the Broncos deep into the 2009 season, we think it’s likely that such a request was made.

Fourth, the folks at the Fiesta Bowl should drop the drama. Instead of describing the arrangement as “devastating,” the people responsible for putting the game on should call the Sugar Bowl folks and find out what they did to get the Georgia Dome ready for the transplanted 2006 edition of the game, which was played one day after the Falcons hosted the Panthers to end the 2005 regular season — and which came less than two days after Miami and LSU squared off on that same field in the Van-dil-A Peach Bowl.

The solution is simple. The folks at the Fiesta Bowl need to do whatever is necessary to get the stadium ready with only one day to prepare, and the Cardinals need to commit now to paying the bill for any expenses above and beyond what the Fiesta Bowl would have incurred if the Cardinals had played their final home game more than two days before the Fiesta Bowl commences, which the contract between the Cardinals and the Fiesta Bowl permits.

It’s a basic legal proposition. The Cardinals are breaching their contract with the Fiesta Bowl. The Fiesta Bowl will incur expenses as a result of the breach. The Cardinals should reimburse the Fiesta Bowl for these expenses.

And then maybe the next time a Fiesta Bowl is due to be played on the Monday after a weekend of regular-season football, someone who is on the franchise’s payroll will realize that the league office needs to know about the potential conflict.

 

[Robbieac]

How would a real football game a day before a meaningless post-season college exhibition game matter, anyway? After all, it's not as though there were a legitimate playoff in NCAA football where the games mattered, the bowl games determine nothing, only the effeminate sports writers decide who to give the mythical championship to anyway and they can vote for whichever team they feel loyalty to.

According to the NCAA's preferences it is not up to the players, but only the writers and the bowl committees, anyway.

I quit watching college ball decades ago and will not watch anymore until they trash their ridiculous current system and institute a real playoff. The NCAA is more loyal to a handful of millionaires running the bowls than to the entirety of college football fandom. Screw 'em.

Don't ask me how I really feel about the NCAA and the backstabbing 2-digit IQ idiots who run it, you'll get an earfull. I have a hard time understanding how any of those fools ever even got into college, much less graduated. They're even dumber than the average college football player. Unfortunately, Cards management doesn't seem to be any sharper.

Where's my coffee? I need my coffee.

A morning without coffee is like a college football season without a championship playoff - incomplete.

Marvelous post! :clap2:

BTW, please don't hesitate next time to tell us how you really feel.

 

[YosemiteSam]

Everything about the Cardinals organization is unprofessional.