It has the accouterments of virtually every championship city.

Signs in store windows cheer on the locals. Flags with team logos, affixed to car windows, flap in the wind. Fans warble on local radio stations songs they’ve penned in celebration of their heroes.

Only this is metropolitan Phoenix, and it’s the Arizona Cardinals for whom this pride and affection is prominently on display.

For those who have watched the dysfunctional relationship between the Cardinals and the Valley of the Sun since the NFL franchise arrived there in 1988, this current scene, of celebrating an improbable run to the Super Bowl, must be what it was like seeing the Loch Ness monster — strange, compelling but, in the end, unreal.

Yet, it’s a documentable fact.

“Before, you told somebody in Phoenix you played for the Cardinals, and it was like they might charge you more,” joked Rob Moore, an Arizona receiver from 1995-2001 and currently a member of the team’s radio broadcasts. “Now the way the city has rallied around this team, the younger guys on the team just don’t understand. They probably think it’s always been that way. They have no idea what it was like playing here for a long time. They have no idea.”

It was current quarterback Kurt Warner who first uttered the words “Super Bowl” and “Cardinals” in the same breath eight days ago after his team eliminated the Philadelphia Eagles in front of a packed house in the NFC Championship Game.

That notion sounds no less strange with Arizona arriving in Tampa, Fla., today for its showdown with the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday.

“Me and my wife were in Old Town Scottsdale recently and my wife was like, ‘Look at this.’ There’s signs in the windows — Go Cardinals, this, that and the other,” said Eric Hill, an Arizona linebacker from 1989-97. “And her question to me was, ‘Would you have ever thought ...?’”

This is a Cardinals franchise, after all, that sold out 12 games during 18 seasons at Sun Devil Stadium before 2006. It’s an area where, until now, Valley fever was a real medical condition, not a love affair.

The Cardinals have gone through seven head coaches and averaged six wins a year since moving to Arizona after 28 years in St. Louis, where defeat also largely was ingrained in the franchise’s DNA.

It was a team known to be so cheap that a player introduced to the media would be asked to return his new Cardinals hat — though he had the option to buy.

Free agents weren’t retained and were hard to recruit, and payroll regularly was kept well under the salary cap, never to be spent.

“I kind of found out later on that when they first got to Arizona that maybe they were penny-pinching for a reason,” said Larry Centers, a standout running back for the Cardinals from 1990-98. “They were penny-pinching because they were basically surviving. And for that, I don’t blame them, because there is a difference.”

The change comes now thanks in large part to a gleaming architectural marvel built in suburban Glendale, Ariz. The silver exterior of University of Phoenix Stadium, completed three years ago, glimmers in the sunlight, showing off every bit of its $455 million price tag.

In effect, the Cardinals’ first permanent digs dating to their inception in 1898 as a club team has been a giant ATM machine, providing a desperately needed infusion of cash. And in doing so, it has transformed a perennial also-ran into a championship contender.

Joining the party

“Any time you try and turn an organization around and try to get a stadium deal done, those are both hard things. And we were doing both at the same time,” said Cardinals president Michael Bidwill, who took the reins from his father, Bill, and helped lead the push for a new stadium.

“It’s been a challenge.”

At Sun Devil Stadium, the Cardinals received no windfall from naming rights, sponsorships, parking revenue and signage, and only limited money from concessions.

With those gains at their new home and revenue streams created by luxury boxes, the Cardinals finally were able to move into football’s new age of free agency.

“We needed the building and the revenue from the building to compete,” said Bill Bidwill, the team’s owner, who was a ball boy for the 1947 Cardinals team that previously won an NFL championship. “And it’s more successful than we thought it would be and I’m very happy about that.”

The Cardinals have been operated by the Bidwill family since 1932. The team played at old Comiskey Park during the franchise’s days in Chicago. It played in two Busch Stadiums after moving to St. Louis in 1960. But it essentially was a secondary tenant in baseball parks.

When the Cardinals failed to get their own facility built in St. Louis, the Bidwills moved to Arizona in ’88 with a handshake deal for a new stadium. But that promise fell through, leaving them to play at a college stadium that’s a broiler on September and October afternoons.

“You look at the teams that are in the playoffs year in and year out,” Michael Bidwill said. “They’re the ones with new stadiums.”

There was initial buzz during the coaching days of Gene Stallings, Joe Bugel and Buddy Ryan in the late ’80s and early ’90s, but that novelty quickly fizzled, awash in losses.

Opponents such as the New York Giants, Chicago Bears, Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers regularly attracted more fans than the home team.

“Try playing under those conditions,” Moore said. “You really played for your teammates. Those were the guys you had to trust and believe in because you knew no one else cared.”

Centers saw resistance from many players who resented the team’s lack of commitment.

“It wasn’t just outward hostility, it was the whispers in the locker room, that negative fog that creeps through,” Centers said. “‘Hey man, why are we staying at this hotel? Hey man, I had an incentive, they fought me for it and didn’t want to pay me.’ Those whispers kind of tear down the fiber. And it comes down from the top. If the organization is not making good, solid decisions, that permeates everything on your team.”

Short-lived success

The Cardinals finally built enough of a foundation that during the ’98 season, they won their first playoff game in 41 years.

And in an attempt to capitalize on that momentum, they gave quarterback Jake Plummer a $15 million signing bonus that largely was viewed as a public-relations ploy for a pending ballot proposition to build a stadium and convention facility on the Tempe-Mesa line. The project had a $1.7 billion price tag and was an uphill battle from the start.

Players such as Plummer, Moore and others went door to door seeking support. They often were subjected to curses — and worse.

“I’ve never been called more names in my life,” said Moore, who once was threatened by a woman wielding a garden hose. “We all had to, at some point, deal with being called a whore. But I also understood how important it was for us to get a stadium.”

The project was voted down, and the next season, key free agents such as tackle Lomas Brown, Centers and linebacker Jamir Miller weren’t retained. The vicious cycle of losing began anew — eight straight years through the 2006 season.

“I’ve always said, once you get to the point where you’re a playoff-caliber team, it should be easier to stay there than it is to get there,” said Vince Tobin, the Cardinals coach from 1996-2000. “But we lost some players to free agency, had a few injuries and, to make a long story short, they didn’t stay there. It took 10 years to get back.”

The wrangling for a new stadium hit new snags, with a Tempe site rejected because of Federal Aviation Administration concerns about its proximity to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.

On the field, the team was extremely young. And six people negotiated contracts, which showed the chaos in the front office.

“We were playing with one hand tied behind our back as a football team,” said Dave McGinnis, the Cardinals head coach from midseason 2000 through 2003.

Finally, in November 2000, voters approved Proposition 302, which authorized new taxes on hotels and rental cars for 30 years. The Cardinals were going to get their new home.

“To me, once they got the stadium, they had no more excuses with the fans,” McGinnis said. “They had to spend money on the players.”

Talent blossoms

Suddenly, some of the younger players who were forced to play early under McGinnis began to develop, including receiver Anquan Boldin, linebacker Gerald Hayes and safety Adrian Wilson.

Dennis Green was hired as coach, and his pull in player personnel was instrumental in the drafting of core players such as receiver Larry Fitzgerald, linebacker Karlos Dansby, safety Antrel Rolle and defensive tackle Darnell Dockett.

Free agents such as end Bertrand Berry and kicker Neil Rackers also were added.

Arizona was on the cusp of becoming competitive, just in time to move into University of Phoenix Stadium for the ’06 season. The Cardinals went 5-11, after which Green was fired, to 8-8 and 9-7 this season while selling out every game.

Current coach Ken Whisenhunt, meanwhile, has instilled a professional, no-nonsense attitude.

And even though the Cardinals are the second seven-loss team to reach the Super Bowl, there’s a feeling that this time, unlike ’98, winning is sustainable.

“They’re getting better players; some really, really good football players,” said Tobin, now a Cardinals season-ticket holder. “That’s usually how football teams become good. And once you’ve achieved that, where you now think of yourself as a really good football player and a really good football team, you carry yourself different and close games go your way instead of the other way because of your attitude.”

Keeping the faith has been more difficult for the people who did sweat it out, through 17 years without a winning record out of 21 seasons in Arizona.

“There are fans who where there when we went 3-13,” Centers said. “I’d like to be able to find one of them right now and just talk to him and see how he feels at this moment because he was there when it wasn’t good. He wasn’t one of those newcomers. The stadium wasn’t there back when we were fighting to win games. But we had a few faithful who were there.”

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