Scottemojo
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My experience in Arizona was that all the SoCal transplants are Raider fans, most of the rest are Cowboy fans(the Cowboys are huge with mexican natives of the northern part of Mexico) and most of the northern transplants are Bears, Packers, Giants, and Vikings fans. Arizona has a huge retirement population from the New York area, and a lot of midwesterners live there full and part time now.The_Z_Man":s3ktfuei said:Arizona, not a super great fanbase. It's the way it is.
One of the problems in AZ that a large % of the people who live here seem to be from somewhere else (in the U.S. or Mexico) and they aren't even remotely interested in cheering for the local team. I just believe it's proper etiquette you know? I'm from north fo Seattle, born in Anacortes actually (the ORIGINAL Seahawks!!!!) know a few 49er fans, a few Raiders fans, a few Chargers or Bronco's fans -- all of us translocated westies kinda root for the Cards when our teams aren't in the mix, but we are in the minority. Even people born here in Arizona pick out of state teams to cheer for - mostly east coast, it's a weird environment. Bizarro world. Not a lot of local pride.
What I see is predominantly Patriots, Bears, Steelers, Cowboys, Packers, Saints fans -- and those fanbases aren't going to support any west coast based team, not a chance in hell. They are too -- well, you know. They are jerkoffs about anything out west that doesn't involve the LA Lakers or USC Trojans.
These days I see quite a few Seahawk jersey's, but just a few years ago I'd get a load of grief when I broke out the blues on Sunday. But even then, if you go anywhere here, you are 5x more likely to see a Bears or Cowboys jersey than you are to see a Cardinals jersey.
The crowd at a Pack/Birds game will be almost half cheese. Same for Cowboys. When the Cards were in the NFC East, it was an extra home game for the Cowboys.
Also, the Bidwills are not well liked people in Phoenix particularly. They came to Arizona without any real stadium plan, rode the Sun Devil coat tails for a decade, them reverted to STL form and tried to extort a stadium from the city. The Glendale site was an alternative, originally the stadium was going near the airport. Cheap land and greedy developers won the day, so what Cardinals fans do exist now have to travel to the far western edge of the most sprawled out metro area in the United States. When that Stadium first began, it was surrounded by cotton fields. Middle. Of. Nowhere. It would have been as if the Seahawks built in Puyallup.
Add to that the Bidwills legendary stories of cheapness and it's no wonder the fanbase has remained relatively small.