Photo: Eliot J. Schechter/Getty Images


Ok, here’s the situation…you’re Cardinal season ticket holder, and have two primo seats for Sunday’s game vs. America’s Team, the Dallas Cowboys. If you go to the game, you realize there’s a good chance that the Cardinals lose to one of the best teams in the NFL, and the ribbing you’ll take from the silver and blue-clad Dallas fans would be too much to take. You also realize that if you go, you’re passing up big bucks from Cowboy fans who would do nearly anything to buy your seats and see their beloved team in action.

On the flip side, if you sell to a Dallas fan, there’s a good chance you’ll be chastised by the other Cardinal fans in your section forever.

So, what do you do? It’s a tough call that many Cardinal fans are having to make this week. Even Arizona quarterback Kurt Warner on Monday made reference to the fact that he thinks “it stinks” that Cardinal fans would sell their tickets to the enemy just to make a quick buck. Head coach Ken Whisenhunt also said he was hopeful that fans wouldn’t unload their tickets to Dallas fans.

Seems pretty hypocritical, doesn’t it? Let’s just say there were tickets available at the Cardinals’ ticket office for this game, and twenty-five Cowboy fans decked out in Dallas garb strolled up to buy the remaining seats. Do you think Cardinal ticket office personnel would refuse them service?

Twenty-one seasons ago, when the Cards left their nest in St. Louis and migrated west, I think we all would have imagined that this would be Cardinal Country after 2 decades. Well, it’s not. Nobody envisioned only 3 non-losing seasons, and two total playoff games in twenty years. The Cardinals have nobody to blame but themselves for not making the Valley’s football fans bleed, well…red.

I sat in my dentist’s office on Monday morning, and Alyson, my hygienist, who also happens to be a rabid season-ticket holding Cardinal fan, talked enthusiastically about the Cardinals’ convincing win over Buffalo the day before. When I asked her about whether or not she was going to the Dallas game on Sunday, her response was immediate. “No. We sold our tickets.” Of course, my next question was “did you sell them to Dallas fans?” Again, her response came quickly. “Yes”, she said. She then explained how she made 2 1/2 times the face value of the tickets by dealing them to Cowboy fans, and that she’s considering doing it again when the Giants come to town on November 23. “There’s only a couple of opportunities to sell those tickets for more than face value.” She said she’ll still gather with the same group of Cardinal fans to watch the game and cheer on the Birds, maybe even in the parking lot in their normal tailgate spot.

My response to her was “good for you”. It’s hard to pass up the lure of getting cash back when you are a season ticket holder for a team in any sport. With concession, parking (sometimes), food and souvenir costs, game day becomes a major financial drain. This is a simple case of supply and demand. The demand is so great from Cowboy fans that it’s nearly impossible not to supply.

We’re also bypassing one very important factor in this whole equation. Does anybody really want to sit in a stadium for three hours and be harassed by Cowboy fans who are arguably the most annoying in the league? If you could avoid that fate and get paid for it, well, that seems like a no-brainer to me.