Many thanks to offer after a 7-8 year journey
For the past few weeks, I have been contemplating my future at ROTB and over the past couple of days it has become clear that now is the right time to move on. This, therefore, will be my final post at the site.
I wish to thank ROTB editor Seth Cox for providing me with a 7-8 year ride that I will never forget and will always be proud of. I will always treasure the football talks Seth and I had back in the days when there were small windows in which to have them. We always joked that we should have been taping these talks. It was really good, informative stuff!
I feel especially grateful for the friendships and brotherhoods I have made here over the years, most notably with the ROTB members whom I consider the most highly educated and open-minded Arizona Cardinals’ fans on the planet.
To be a long-time Cardinals’ fan is a paradoxical experience of epic proportions. By virtue of our extraordinary perseverance —- think about this —- we have artfully managed to balance eternal optimism with harrowing paranoia.
The Cardinals’ franchise has a record of 593-812-41, which is a .422 winning percentage that currently ranks 30th of 32 NFL teams.
As some of you may have realized, ROTB has been on SB Nation’s endangered species list for a couple of years now. Truth is, we don’t have the vast numbers of fans that so many of the other NFL teams have. Years of losing, a merry-go-round of coaching changes and two relocations (CHI —-> STL —-> ARI) have not helped to create fan stability.
But like the American flag in our national anthem —- the flag of the fan base that the Arizona Cardinals do have is —-> “still there.”
Therefore, in light of the Sword of Damocles hovering over our ROTB heads this past season, it made me extremely proud to learn that over the 2025 NFL Draft weekend you guys turned to ROTB in droves, to the tune of registering over 37,977 page views from 10,820 visitors at a 5:45 minute average reading time for the articles, which on average typically average elsewhere between 1-2 minutes. Talk about member engagement!
Without that sensational turnout, who knows where ROTB would be right now?
I cannot thank Arizona Sports Radio hosts Dan Bickley, Vince Marotta, John Gambadoro and Dave Burns enough for their interest in ROTB and our work. Your support means the world to me.
I cannot thank Brett Kollmann enough for staying loyal to us all of these years, especially in light of his stringent time commitments as his popularity among NFL fans and pundits continues to soar to unparalleled heights.
Huge thanks to Dan Viens of the Seahawks Forever Podcast for his interest in ROTB. I hope, in the near future, that we create an NFC West Podcast.
Heartfelt thanks to all the special guests that Kyle Ledbetter and I have had on the Red Rain Podcast, such as our own ROTB iconic catalyst since61, Professor Joe Comeau, Marcos Labrada, Suz, good friend and NFL historian Barry Schuck (CLE), Dan Viens (SEA), Ed Kratz (PHI), John Valentine (NYG), Paul Buker, Brian Mulrooney, et al.
“L’il Rock” and I are happy to say that not only will the Red Rain Podcast be returning on Mondays or Tuesdays during the pre-season and regular season, I have already started posting articles at a new blogspot website, which I intend to do on a regularly basis at:
https://redrainblogforazcardinalsfans.blogspot.com/
I want to thank my fellow ROTB writers Blake Murphy, Andy Kwong, Johnny Venerable and John Buckley. You guys made things at ROTB interesting, provocative and fun.
Most of all, as I always said throughout my 38-year high school teaching career, “the students are what makes a school special” — well, the members are what makes ROTB special.
The robust daily discussions that you engage in every day on this site is the true calling card of the venue. These discussions have been understandably contentious at times, but at the end of the day, after the gloves come off, what’s left is a host of meaningful relationships and a special kind of kinship that I believe, in its own unique way, is something that only tenaciously loyal Cardinals fans have.
So ROTB members: stay strong —- keep building what we’ve been steadily growing for years.
One equal temper of heroic hearts
Keep showing SB Nation, in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s words, who and what you really are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts
“Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
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“Not to yield,” —- well in the immortal words of Shawshank Red —- “that’s goddam right.”
Farewell ROTB, I love you guys.