Cardinals beat the Cowboys. Were any Arizona fans there to see it?

Yo, football fans in Arizona: You’re breaking me down with all this wrong jersey stuff, guys.

Seriously.

Wear red on Sundays.

I’ve been feeling like this for a long time, but I felt compelled to write this now as I sit on my couch, instead of in the press box at State Farm Stadium to see the Cardinals beat the Dallas Cowboys, 28-16.

I just couldn’t stand to see all that blue and white in the stands while guys like DJ Humphries, Dennis Gardek and Jalen Thompson are risking their health and safety to protect The Nest, and players like Budda Baker and Kyler Murray are working like crazy to get back on the field for the Red Sea.

It’s not cool, guys. We’ve got to do better.

I get it. Maybe you’re an Arizona football fan who started rooting for Dallas way before the Cardinals ever came to Arizona. Or you’re from Dallas, and this is your chance to see the team you grew up rooting for.

And we can stretch this out to apply to Lions, Bears, Giants, Seahawks and Steelers fans who mob Glendale every time their squad comes to town.

But have you considered that you’re robbing your kids and yourself of the thing that made all this matter in the first place? Or that you’re contributing to the reality that the Cardinals had just one win in their previous 15 home games coming into Sunday?

I’m guilty, too. Before I started covering the Cardinals as an opinion writer for The Arizona Republic in 2017, I came to see the Lions play the Cardinals a couple of times.

I remember bragging to a co-worker who grew up in Arizona that I was raising my kids to be Lions, Tigers, Pistons and Red Wings fans and was feeling pretty good about myself until he said, “Let them have what you had.”

He was telling me that the thing that made my experience as a fan special was that the whole town pulled for the same team. We all were all wearing the same colors and logos. We had the same cups, coffee mugs, Zubaz pants, replica helmets, neckties and goofy hats. ALL of us.

Win or lose, we were in it together.

He was right.

More from the game: Arizona Cardinals beat Dallas Cowboys for first win of the season

Let’s not put this all on the players, either. The whole “if they won more, fans would show up” argument is guano, which is a fancy work for bird poop, which is a polite way of saying what I want to say without using a word that’s unprintable.

I was there when Packers fans turned State Farm Stadium in to Lambeau Southwest in 2021. Arizona was 7-0 at the time. Green Bay was 6-1.

It was a preview of the NFC Championship game. Young gun Kyler Murray vs. grizzled, ol’ sheriff Aaron Rodgers on a Thursday night with the entire football world watching – and Cardinals fans let a bunch of Cheese Heads come in and grill them?! The Cardinals haven’t been the same since.

This isn’t a call to harass or intimidate fans of other teams, by the way.

We’ve seen way too many fights in NFL stadiums, lately. It’s embarrassing.

I’m just saying that I’ve covered games all over the country and other fans have it a lot better, regardless of whether the team they support is any good.

The Vikings have the same number of Super Bowl wins as the Cardinals, which is to say zero, but their games are an experience. The stadium is so purple it looks like somebody whacked open a piñata at Prince’s house. There’s a gigantic horn that looks and sounds like something that would summon Thor from Asgard. And everybody says “skol!” (Whatever that means.)

Browns games? They’ve been to one fewer Super Bowl than the Cardinals, which is to say zero, and the team hasn’t mattered since Bill Belichick was Billy, the Kid defensive coordinator, and people thought the team was named after its running back. (That’s a Jim Brown joke, youngsters. Look up some highlights on YouTube or read a book or – gasp! – have a conversation with someone who remembers the ’60s.) But the stadium always seems full of brown and orange and grown men who dress and bark like dogs.

I’ve heard an argument that Arizona fans can make good money selling their tickets to out-of-towners, and I get that. It’s not easy making a living in this economy, but where I grew up there were plenty of good people who couldn’t afford the basics, let alone any extras, and I can’t remember a single time that the Pontiac Silverdome or Ford Field was overrun with Bears fans.

Real fans put their money where their heart is.

And I know the Cardinals have been a vagabond franchise, going from Chicago to St. Louis to the Valley of the Sun. But the Cardinals got to town in 1988. That was 35 years ago. The team got here a lot sooner than I did when I showed up around a decade ago. My guess is that’s true for most transplants. Since we’re the guests here, we should be the ones to adapt.

There’s no reason the crowd shouldn’t be full of Hollywood Brown and James Conner shirts to go with Kurt Warner, Pat Tillman, Roy Green, Aeneas Williams, Chuck Cecil, Ron Wolfley, Adrian Wilson, Anquan Boldin and, obviously, Larry Fitzgerald jerseys.

There’s certainly plenty of blame to go around. Maybe the organization hasn’t been any good at connecting with the public? Maybe local media has been terrible at telling the stories that make people care?

Maybe.

But ultimately, this is on the fans.

Current players, franchise legends, and up-and-coming rookies like Michael Wilson and Paris Johnson Jr. deserved better in their first win.

You know who else deserves better? You and all the kids growing up in this town.

Seriously, enough with all this wrong jersey stuff.

Sundays shouldn’t be about where you’re from, they should be about where you’re at: Arizona.

Wear red.

Reach Moore at gmoore@azcentral.com or 602-444-2236. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @SayingMoore.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Road fans flooding Cardinals games is embarrassing to city, players