It was a great ride.
Wait 'til next year.
Sorry, folks, but as a 30-plus-year Valley sports fan, the usual one-liners that follow the end of a playoff run that ended too soon just don't do it for me anymore.
Arizona's "Big 4" teams -- the Cardinals, Suns, D-backs and Coyotes -- have been to a combined 14 (fourteen) conference/league championships. In other words, our teams have been one of the last four standing on 14 separate occasions.
Our state's number of Big 4 world championships? One.
That number will remain one for the foreseeable future after the Cardinals' embarrassing defeat at the hands of the Carolina Panthers in Sunday's NFC Championship game.
"Our fans take this (loss) personally, and they should," Cards quarterback Carson Palmer said after the game.
Based on the number of "Final Four" appearances, the law of averages suggests our state should have three or four Big 4 world titles. Instead, we've been forced to keep a tight grip of the memory of the Arizona Diamondbacks' World Series run for 15 years and counting.
After the D-backs beat the Yankees in Game 7, Curt Schilling told the fans, "This will not be our last world championship."
And it wasn't -- at least for him. Schilling went on to win two more titles -- with the Boston Red Sox -- in 2004 and '07.
This is a phenomenon that Valley fans seem to encounter more often than most fan bases do: Former Cards, D-backs, Suns and Coyotes often go on to win titles with other teams. Recently, ex-Suns Boris Diaw (2014) and Leandro Barbosa (2015) have won an NBA championship outside Arizona.
The most frustrating example of this, however, has to be Robert Horry. The 16-year NBA pro won multiple titles with three of the four teams he played for. The only team he won absolutely nothing with, of course, was the Suns.
Soon, this ex-player list may include Panthers wide receiver Ted Ginn, who followed up an awful 2014 campaign in Arizona by having a career season in Carolina, including a monster game Sunday against those same Cards.
Of course, it's silly to be angry at the Cardinals for Sunday's letdown. Each man on that team wanted to advance to Super Bowl 50 as badly as the most hardcore Birdgang member did.
Earlier this week, Larry Fitzgerald penned a beautiful "Ode to Arizona" letter in which he demonstrated that he understands the frustration and disappointment that AZ fans feel year in and year out, and takes it personally.
Cardinal nation we are terribly sorry about the bitter defeat we suffered this evening!!
— Larry Fitzgerald (@LarryFitzgerald) January 25, 2016
I appreciate that sentiment from Fitzgerald and other longtime local athletes like Coyotes captain Shane Doan who have come to love and bond with this fan base.
However, I'm certain that I speak for a lot of longtime Valley sports fans when I say: I've had it.
I'm had it with the notion that we should be content with division championships and conference finals appearances. I've had it with the just wait 'til you see how good this team will be next year talk.
Cardinals coach Bruce Arians feels the same way.
"If you're not putting a ring on your finger, if that confetti's not falling on your head, it's a bad year," Arians said after Sunday's loss.
"To win 14 games, to win a playoff game, to be in the championship game, those are all positive things. But we're not about that. We're about winning a championship."
The Cardinals surpassed most experts' expectations this season by winning the NFC West division title and advancing to the NFC Championship game. After digesting Sunday night's massacre in Charlotte, most of those experts will likely label the Cards' season as good enough.
Count me out of that crowd. Contrary to popular belief, Valley sports fans are as loyal as any in the nation, and they've experienced more undeserved heartache than the fan base of any other American city with one of each Big 4 team.
I'm tired of looking up at all the division and conference title banners that adorn out stadiums and arenas, while those world title banners are still conspicuously missing.
This fan base deserves so much better. Good enough just isn't good enough anymore.
