Can hockey work in Phoenix?
Apr 22, 2011, 6:07 PM | Updated: 7:31 pm
Phoenix is not a great sports town.
There, I said it. You know it’s true.
At times, Phoenix is not even a good sports town. If we are being completely honest with ourselves, it’s a decent sports town.
Yes, decent. Not bad, not great, just decent.
The one good thing about this place is at least the fans support you when you win. But like many sports towns, this place doesn’t show a lot of love to the local teams when they are not winning.
We know Phoenix is a transient city. Many of us come from somewhere else and have brought our hometown loyalties with us.
For many of us the Suns, Diamondbacks, Coyotes, Cardinals and ASU are our second favorite teams. For a lot of us, we want to root for the local teams, but we want them to give us a reason to root for them – and lately they haven’t done that.
The Diamondbacks lost 97 games last season, the Suns failed to make the playoffs, the Cardinals went 5-11, the Coyotes just got embarrassed in the first round of the playoffs and Arizona State football went a ho-hum 6-6 and failed to make a Bowl game – again. I won’t even mention how bad ASU men’s basketball was as I am trying to forget the season Herb Sendek’s squad had.
So you can imagine how much support the local teams had this year with all that losing. Not much.
The Cardinals sold out all of their games last year, but football is king and they were coming off a playoff season the year before. This year, the NFL thought so much of the Cardinals they are a member of the Forgotten Five – one of only five teams without a primetime game. The Rams, Seahawks and 49ers all at least play one primetime game, but not Arizona. And I’d be surprised if the Cardinals don’t have their first blackout in the new stadium this season.
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