Remembering Flagstaff: When Cardinals training camp was really training camp

Jay Feely has the ultimate wedding crasher story. 

On an off-day at Cardinals training camp in Flagstaff, Feely and a group of teammates that included Kevin Kolb, Daryn Colledge, Dave Zastudil, Lyle Sendlein, Anthony Sherman, Mike Leach, Patrick Peterson and Andre Roberts, decided to go golfing at Flagstaff Ranch.

“We had set it up so we could have dinner after we golfed, but when we finished, we came in and there was a wedding going on,” Feely said. “The GM came out and he’s like, ‘Hey, you guys are all set.’ We’re like, ‘No, you have a wedding. We’re not gonna interrupt a wedding,’ but he insisted. He said, ‘I have it set up way down at the end. It’s away from the wedding. It’s fine. Our kitchen can handle it, no problem.'” 

The Cardinals reluctantly agreed. They soon realized there was no escaping their celebrity.

“We started having dinner and people from the wedding started trickling in, coming over to our table and saying hi, and asking for a picture,” Feely said. “Then the bridal party comes out and then the groomsmen come out. And then the bride’s father comes out and says, ‘Hey, is it OK if my daughter comes over and takes a picture with you guys?’ So we do it and then the bride’s father is like, ‘Would you guys mind coming into the wedding?’

“We’re like, ‘No, we’re not coming in,’ but he’s like, ‘Please, this could make our whole wedding.’ We agreed to come in for like five minutes and say hi because the bride was asking, but we tell him, ‘Just don’t say anything about us.’ Sure enough, as soon as we walk in, the DJ’s like, ‘We want to welcome the Arizona Cardinals to the wedding!’ We were so embarrassed. We were taking all the emphasis off this bride so we said hi real quick, gave her a toast, and then boom, we were out of there.”

That chance encounter has likely been told by the couple a thousand times, but it’s the type of encounter that occurred all the time while the Cardinals trained in Flagstaff from 1988 — the year they arrived in the Valley — until 2012. It’s the kind of encounter that occurs with far less frequency since the team opted to move training camp to Glendale in 2013.

The annual Red & White Practice which the team will host this Saturday at State Farm Stadium used to be a raucous affair with myriad interactions between fans and players in Flagstaff. Now it feels more like another preseason game, with fans separated from the field by the high walls of the stands.

There were multiple reasons for the move. Some players complained about the accommodations in Flagstaff where they were housed in Northern Arizona University’s dorms. The relationship between the team and the city soured. Football staffs have grown significantly, and the cost of staging camp in another location has grown exponentially.

The majority of NFL teams now stay close to home. The players can see their families. But while there have been gains in the move, something was also lost when the Cardinals came down the hill for good 12 years ago.

“Charm is what we lost,” said longtime Cardinals beat writer Kent Somers, who covered all but two training camps in Flagstaff for The Arizona Republic. “In a way, you felt like you were stepping back in time. I grew up far away from an NFL city, reading Jerry Kramer’s books about the Green Bay Packers and their training camp at St. Norbert College. To me, Flagstaff seemed a lot like that. It was just so great for fans. They could stand on the ropes as players walked to and from practice and get within arm’s reach. 

“I remember Kurt Warner and Larry Fitzgerald riding on their Segways and stopping to sign autographs and chat with people. Kurt stopped every day until he had signed for every last person who wanted one and then he probably approached three more people and asked them if they needed anything. I know the Cardinals have tried to do things to replicate that at State Farm Stadium, but it’s just impossible in a domed stadium with fans up in the stands. You just can’t compare that to three outdoor fields and Flagstaff.”

---

Altitude training in the thinner air was a major draw for the Cardinals.

“We always started faster than everybody because we had that illegal blood doping up there,” cornerback Patrick Peterson once jokingly told me.

Another obvious draw for every-day Arizonans in July and August was the opportunity to escape the Valley’s scorching summer heat. Flagstaff is almost 7,000 feet up, offering high temperatures in the high 70s to low 80s, and cool evenings that enhance the nightlife offerings of its historic downtown.

While in Flagstaff, you could take a hike at 9,500 feet on Arizona Snowbowl. You could grab a beer at Beaver Street Brewery or Busters. You could visit the cliff dwellings of indigenous people at Walnut Canyon, or the remains of an eruption in 1085 at the Sunset Crater Volcano. You could grab a gourmet coffee downtown at Macy’s, or you might even say hello to Fitzgerald at the Sizzler on Milton Road where he loved to dine.

The best part of Flagstaff, however, was the access. The access for media to players and coaches. The access for fans to players and coaches. And the access for players and coaches to media and fans.

“Some of the best friends I ever made in life are people I met in Flagstaff like Jim and Melinda Sharp who own Sharp Drywall down there in the Valley,” said former Cardinals coach Dave McGinnis. “They live out at Silverleaf, but they also had a place at Forest Highlands up in Flagstaff. During training camp, I used to take the staff over to their place for dinner.

“I just loved Flagstaff. I absolutely loved it. I can remember those three fields just being packed with people. It was such a wonderful venue. Some of my best memories are of riding that golf cart from that top field all the way back to the locker room with Pat Tillman. We were stopping every 10 or 15 feet, all the way down those tiers of hills to sign autographs and to talk with the fans.”

---

The same sort of access existed for media. You could walk with coaches and players all the way to the dressing room areas at Walkup Skydome, conducting interviews. You could even pause with them if the interviews ran long. Nobody said a thing. Relationship building was encouraged.

“We used to just go hang out around the cafeteria where the players and media both ate,” Somers recalled. “You got to know guys a little bit that way. Jamie Dukes, a center who had been around the league a little bit, would come strolling in before lunch. He smoked these long thin cigarettes or cigars and he was always dressed impeccably, even at camp. He rolls up one day, stubs out his long stick and goes, ‘Hey, fellas. Just another day at the plant.’

“During the Buddy Ryan years they had signed [linebacker] Seth Joyner as their major acquisition. While we were waiting outside the lunchroom for players, up rolls this luxury car — I think it was a Mercedes — and there’s this one tiny parking spot open in front. We’re thinking, ‘There’s no way this guy’s going to parallel park in that spot. There’s no way he can even try,’ but he wheels in there and it only took like two turns of the steering wheel. He parked it perfectly with inches to go on either side. He gets out, sees all of us staring in amazement and he goes, ‘Man! I’ve been living in Philadelphia,’ and then he just walks past us.”

---

One of the more photo worthy days of training camp was arrival day. Because the dormitory decor at NAU was spartan, players would regularly roll up with their own mattresses, giant fans to help cool the non-air conditioned rooms, and TVs to help pass the time with movies or video games.

“I always get a bed [brought in], even at the hotel,” Fitzgerald told me years ago. “My buddy, [CEO] John Merwin, over at Brooklyn Bedding, he makes the best mattresses and he takes care of me and Patrick. I have his mattresses in my home. I have his mattress in the hotel. Wherever I go, I always sleep good. Make sure you put that in the story.”

Somers remembers defensive back Robert Tate shopping the Black Friday deals for big-screen TVs and selling them to his teammates at camp. Defensive lineman Bertrand Berry remembers getting stuck in a room his first couple of years with three other players.

“Four guys had to share one toilet which was not an ideal situation,” Berry said, laughing. “And then [former coach] Denny Green would come by in the morning and knock on the doors with a hanger to wake us up. He was real old school. He did it himself.”

Former coach Vince Tobin was more of a delegator. He dispatched McGinnis, his defensive coordinator, to check up on the players.

“When the rookies came up there, Vince always had me do room checks just so I could get a feel for all the players and see who was in on time for curfew,” McGinnis said. “The very first night, I go up to the third floor where the rookies are and I start checking rooms and nobody’s in their room. I mean, nobody. I’m thinking, ‘What in the hell is going on here?’ And all of a sudden I hear a lot of noise at the end of the hallway.

“I come into that room and I swear to God, Corey Chavous has everything cleared out of his room with one bed pushed clear up against the wall. He’s got a bedsheet hung up on the far wall, he’s got a film projector and he’s got a bookshelf with rows and rows of game film. Everybody’s jammed into that room and he’s playing a game between the Chicago Bears when I was coaching there against Detroit and Barry Sanders.”

McGinnis wasn’t mad. He was dumbfounded.

“I said, ‘Corey, what in the hell is going on?'” McGinnis said. “Without missing a beat, Chavous says, ‘Coach Mac, what was the defense you were running here on this move from Barry Sanders?’ So I said, ‘Let’s watch a little tape here.’

“It was awesome. I mean, it was absolutely fabulous.”

---

The Cardinals did not win a lot of games during their Flagstaff tenure, but they did have a few playoff appearances and they did roll out a bunch of stars that included Warner, Fitzgerald, Adrian Wilson, Jake Plummer, Tillman, Darnell Dockett, Neil Lomax, Roy Green and countless others.

Speaking of rolling, Warner’s favorite memory of camp was when Fitzgerald bought Segways for the alphas on the team — a group that included Warner, Dockett, Wilson and newly acquired safety Kerry Rhodes.

“Being able to kind of wheel around campus or wheel it out to practice; that was always fun,” Warner said. “I never did camp any other way than we did in Flagstaff so it’s hard for me to say what they don’t get now. I still think there’s opportunities to do a lot of those same things, but for me, the best part of Flagstaff was the camaraderie and team building activities.

“I loved going away for training camp. Having a family and being a family guy, it was a nice break for me where I didn’t feel the pressure of having to be home with the family and do all of those things. It was like, ‘Let’s get away. Let me be with my guys. Let me be 24/7 football or 24/7 team, and enjoy that process.’ That’s what Flagstaff gave you.”

---

That said, by the time camp ended, players were eager to get home to their creature comforts.

“When camp ended, it was like the Phoenix 400 down the hill,” Berry said.

Once in a while, that departure got delayed. Like the night when Berry became Usain Bolt.

“When we had our last practice one year, I was packing that night so I could leave first thing in the morning,” Berry said. “I’m in the parking lot and it’s fairly empty. I hear this sound behind me like scratching. I turn around and I don’t see anything at first so I start packing again. I hear it again, I turn around again and it’s a skunk looking me dead in the face.” 

Berry wasn’t the least bit interested in connecting with his newest fan.

“When it lifted that tail, I don’t think I’ve ever run that fast,” he said. “I was a track guy back in the day and I consider myself a pretty fast runner, but when that tail lifted, I knew what was coming and when I tell you I was gone, I was gone.

“I didn’t care about the truck. I didn’t care about my belongings. I lost a flip flop, but I didn’t care. I ran into the grass and the trees. I didn’t care about blisters or splinters or anything. All I cared about was not smelling like a damn skunk.”

---

Top photo via Getty Images: The fields at Northern Arizona University (with Walkup Skydome in the background) where the Cardinals used to hold training camp

Follow Craig Morgan on X (Twitter)