A Super surprise for Cards.

• Position: SPORTS

Byline: Bill Doyle

COLUMN: Tuning In

It took 110 years, but the Arizona Cardinals have finally become Must See TV.

When the Cardinals meet the Steelers in Super Bowl XLIII on Sunday, it won't be the most watched Super Bowl of all time, but it will definitely be the most watched Cardinals game ever.

Until their surprising run through the NFC playoffs the past three weeks, the Cardinals were so bad for so long, few cared about them. You probably didn't know that the Cardinals are the oldest professional football team in America. They were founded as the Morgan Athletic Club in Chicago in 1898 and became a charter member of the NFL in 1920. But their last NFL championship came so long ago, in 1947, John Madden wasn't in the broadcast booth. In fact, the Cardinals' title victory over the Philadelphia Eagles that year wasn't even televised nationally.

Over the next six decades, the Cardinals were so inept, they moved to St. Louis and then Arizona in search of a fan base. Expectations remained low this season when the Cardinals lost four of their last six games, including a humiliating 47-7 defeat versus the Patriots, to finish the regular season at 9-7. But then they somehow won three playoff games, two more than they had totaled in the previous 60 years, to win the NFC.

Madden and Al Michaels, who will announce the Super Bowl on NBC, haven't worked a Cardinals game all season. The Cardinals didn't appear on NBC's Sunday Night Football package because they simply weren't considered good enough to attract enough viewers.

"I guarantee you one thing," Michaels said, "they'll be on Sunday night next year."

Michaels, in fact, hasn't worked a Cardinals game since 1999 when Arizona played San Francisco on Monday Night Football on ABC. Michaels remembers the game because 49ers quarterback Steve Young suffered one last concussion that night that ended his career.

Michaels' last Super Bowl that included a team he hadn't announced all season was also in 1999. Both the St. Louis Rams and the Tennessee Titans were pleasant surprises that season and didn't appear on MNF. Kurt Warner will quarterback the Cardinals in this Super Bowl a decade after leading the Rams past the Titans in that one.

This will be NBC's 16th Super Bowl, tying CBS for the most, but its first since 1998. It will be Michaels' seventh Super Bowl, Madden's 11th and their third together. Madden will become the first broadcaster to work the Super Bowl on all four networks that have broadcast...