How to Save the Arizona Cardinals

The Arizona Cardinals are pathetic. They've lost seven games in a row and the highlight of their year is a loss to Chicago. Matt Leinart hasn't been getting the job done since he finished with Paris Hilton and Edgerrin James is already talking about how he made a mistake in coming to Arizona.

Still, the Cardinals aren't the first team to lose on a level like this and they certainly won't be the last. The sad thing is that it doesn't have to be this way. They can save their season and return to the land of winners by simply implementing one of the five proven, sure-fire remedies for losing.

1. Sex Cruise

In my many years of following sports, I've never seen a losing streak so intense that a team sex cruise can't turn it around. I can't put my finger on it, there just seems to be something magical that happens when you mix drugs, sex toys, money, naked women performing live sex acts, and illegal gambling and put it on a boat in the middle of a lake. In today's ultra-sensitive climate, it may not be politically correct to suggest that any team embark on a sex cruise as a remedy to losing. That being said, political correctness isn't a luxury losers can afford.

Put aside all the negativity surrounding sex cruises for a minute and just look at the facts. Last season, the Minnesota Vikings tanked at the start of the season, stumbling to a 1-3 record out of the gate. They were a joke and no one took them seriously. Then the bye week rolled around, the team spent some quality time together, then they promptly cruised to an 8-4 record the rest of the way.

Teams can play paintball together, go on a team golf outing or fishing trip, or even try to bond by renting out a bowling alley or arcade. Yet, none of these trivial efforts will ever reach the efficiency level of a sex cruise. I know it would be easier on the Cardinals if there were travel agents that specialized in putting these kinds of trips together, but someone in that locker room is going to have to step up and be the Fred Smoot of the team if they ever want to stop affixing Ls next to every game on their schedule.

2. Rally Around an Injured Teammate

Even if you have to injure him yourself.

A completely unscientific poll of 11 people recently revealed that more than half of feel-good stories in sports revolve around a team coming together to win a game or 10 for a fallen teammate. We see this "win one for the Gipper" mentality in just about every sport these days and it's starting to get predictable. A key player is either injured on the field by trying to make an outrageous play (usually a diving catch or a crushing tackle) or off the field (usually the victim of a horrific car crash).

The team then comes together to overcome the tragedy of losing fill-in-the-blank-star and starts to win at an unprecedented rate. In fact, they start to win so much that it begins to look like fate simply removed the one piece holding the team back from victory. Regardless, the season usually ends in some dramatic victory and everyone starts crying, including fill-in-the-blank-tragically-injured-star, who has watched this season unfold from either his hospital room or wheelchair.

So it seems pretty clear that the Cardinals could escape this horrific climate of losing by being lucky enough to have a player get involved in a horrific accident. Of course, here's the tricky part and this is what separates winners from losers. Losers will just sit around waiting for this accident to happen, sleepwalking through the season devoid of any inspiration to win. Winners, however, will help force the hand of fate ever so slightly and if the Cardinals want to be champions, this is what they will do. They have to be prepared to do whatever it takes to win, even if that means hitting Matt Leinart with a car or hiring someone to rough up James.

3. Burning an Effigy of the Coach

This is another that might surprise people, but look at the track record. In the movie "The Mighty Ducks 2," Gordon Bombay and Team USA get caught up in the celebrity of the Goodwill Games and end up getting obliterated by Iceland. Not long after that, Coach Bombay rediscovered that hockey is supposed to be fun and he helped get this across to his team by burning a cardboard cutout of his likeness in a barrel. The lesson clearly resonated with the team as they went on to win the entire tournament, bringing pride to Americans everywhere who know what the Goodwill games are. The story was so powerful that it was eventually turned into a movie.

It seems clear that if the Cardinals can't book a sex cruise and don't have the heart to injure one of their own, then maybe burning an effigy of Denny Green might return them to their winning ways. Sports are supposed to be fun and always losing is not fun. If the Cardinals can somehow rediscover the joy of football through burning an effigy of their coach, history shows us that the winning will follow.

4. Slumpbusters

Mark Grace coined the term "Slumpbuster" during his playing days. Simply put, it's how he described a certain type of woman he believed helped him end slumps. When he would find himself struggling on the field, he would later seek out the "gnarliest, ugliest chick" he could find and then attempt to bed her. If he was successful, then his slump would be over the next day. This seems like a clear, efficient, and tested method to overcome slumps. The Cardinals just need to find about 60 or so of the gnarliest, ugliest chicks around and begin the mass fornication.

This is probably one of the easiest steps the Cardinals could take. With America becoming an increasingly overweight nation, there shouldn't be any shortage of gnarly and ugly chicks to choose from (they could've done all of their recruiting when they were in Green Bay Sunday). The only hurdle here might be the reservations of some of the players' wives, but they just need to realize that it's business and nothing more. It's a sacrifice and one the players surely won't enjoy, but one forgettable night could turn the Cardinals into the Colts. Besides, who wants to be married to a loser?

The scary thing to think about is what could happen if Arizona was able to combine steps one and four by inviting the slumpbusters on the sex cruise — they would probably win the Super Bowl.

Note to readers: please don't try this at home as it's one of the few steps that works only for professional athletes. I have a friend who I suspect has been subconsciously using this method to turn around his life and, well, let's just say he didn't break five slumps last month.

5. Fabricate an Attack on the Team

If there's not one person in the organization man enough to injure one of the players, then this could be a viable alternative. Players might squabble with each other, but when someone from the outside attacks a player, they will be met by the wrath of the entire team.

In years past, it was enough to use incidents of "disrespect" from newspapers to bring a team together and get them to play on another level. These days, you need something more extreme. For instance, last season Philadelphia had to deal with the widespread frustration with the play of Donovan McNabb. Then the president of the local NAACP, J. Whyatt Mondesire, came out with his ridiculous little tirade attacking McNabb. Suddenly, the Philly locker room remembered just how good he was and quickly came to his support.

The Cardinals need their own J. Whyatt Mondesire to come up with something so outrageously ignorant, so inflammatory that it unites the entire team and get them to play like they actually care. They need someone to shake things up and make people angry, but like the potential injury, they can't always wait for someone else to get the job done. Someone is going to have to create an anonymous MySpace page accusing the Cardinals of sympathizing with al-Qaeda and claiming that Arizona isn't capable of beating any NFL team and would even struggle against a team like the Cincinnati Sizzle (a professional football team ... for women).

If someone can pull off the attack without being out-ed by the team, this could work wonders for the Cardinals. After all, America broke out of the greatest slump in history, The Great Depression, by responding to attacks with WWII.