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" I&amp;#039;m pretty sure I know what&amp;#039;s needed to fix the Arizona Cardinals. Give them a goddamn haircut, that&amp;#039;s what. Enough with the ponytails scrunchied up with braids, the floppy hair extensions, the big, spittle-laden Fu Manchu mustaches. Laser down those tattoos. And shave the sleepy faces. Tuck in those shirts, ye sideline chorus of gimpy linemen. What may have passed for a kind of style when the Cardinals were winning \u2014 finishing last year 7-2, going 4-0 out of the gate this year \u2014 started to look like a lie on Monday night, like someone had tricked the lot of them into believing they should, each and every one, outfit themselves in the same frontroom of a shitbox Scottsdale tattoo parlor. Pirate style is sheer vanity, when you&amp;#039;re getting torn to pieces by the 49ers one more time, 24-3, on the way to dropping four straight games. Not that close, either. With the hurricane bearing down on, well, everyone or their cousin, the Arizona Cardinals stepped into the Monday Night Football spotlight and played their very own brand of D+ pro football that has, at least in some large part, helped to make the NFC West perhaps the least interesting division in pro football for going on nearly a decade. The 49ers came in dinged-up, some thought stumbling, but clearly on their widely-anticipated, specially-priced cruise to West Coast dominance. San Francisco held up their end of the bargain \u2014 been a good week for that town \u2014 including some genuine accuracy from Alex Smith, who hooked up for two serious touchdowns with Michael Crabtree, who seems pretty much forgiven now by the entirety of the holy alliance of patron-football analysts and their deskjockey ex-coach best-boys, for his thoughtless rookie holdout four years ago. Crabtree has, in a word, arrived. Hell, the 49ers even tossed in an anachronistically adept catch-and-run by the once-forgotten, soon-to-be-forgotten Randy Moss for their third score. And that was the extent of the Moss highlights, except his comically bad upfield blocking, which started with a total whiff and ended with a kind of end-of-run pick-block in which the scaly Moss took the worst of it. Still, the touchdown was a clunky throwback pleasure, in which the vaunted Arizona defensive backfield cooperated by getting deked out of their shoes by a guy who spent all last fall fishing, happily, in a retention pond. The thing is, football is best when it looks like an effort from within, an outcome wrenched from the gut of desire. A game should be up-and-down, back-and-forth, a trundling carnival ride, replete with gravity, momentum, and loose bolts rattling their threat to blow everything apart on the last turn. Which brings up the stinking trouble of a meaningless Week 8 rout in the NFL: These games aren&amp;#039;t so much one-sided as they are ceaselessly even-handed. On one end, everything looks effortless; on the other, no effort expended whatsoever.  On the Niners&amp;#039; end, Alex Smith was a throw away from achieving a perfect passer rating on Monday night, the happening of which might have sent Mike Tirico into a shaky fit of happiness. Meanwhile, the Cardinals netted seven yards rushing, a franchise low since 1953, a year in which Phoenix was not yet a suburb of itself. The Cards played at quarterback a guy named Skelton, whose mighty halftime hail mary from about midfield barely made the 12 yard line before it was intercepted. The Skell took a brave beating, however, with one-time wunderkind and former first stringer Kevin Kolb watching from the sidelines, wearing a droopy sweatshirt, a head-to-toe Vicodin buzz, and \u2014 of course \u2014 the team&amp;#039;s signature, brush-free hair tangle. (It should be noted that the Skell does have a fairly impressive mustache. However, it, too, must be shaved.) See, with Sandy bearing down on the other coast, the entire country pulled close to their televisions to angle in on a hurricane that threatened one-third of the nation, and seemed to cover one-third of the planet, because nearly everyone had some reason to care. But for those of us watching our Monday-night jones \u2014 or those of you looking for a distraction \u2014 there were the Cardinals, who didn&amp;#039;t seem to give a shit. Arizona fans cared, of course; as everyone at Sagebrush Field quietly shot one another What, Me Worry? glances, they stayed loud \u2014 andsurprisingly late into the game \u2014 despite the fact that their team did not come with any volume whatsoever. The Cards just didn&amp;#039;t seem to care. Where does caring start? You gotta look in the mirror and make some decisions. Here are two for the Cardinals: Get a haircut, and put a razor to your chin. When you look like you don&amp;#039;t care, nobody&amp;#039;s going to be surprised when it turns out you don&amp;#039;t have a damn bit of pride at the end of a beating. Nobody&amp;#039;s even going to offer you a hand up. MORE SAN FRAN SPORTS JOY: Alex Lemon on the Agony and the Ecstasy of the World Series (and the Lions) in Detroit MORE NFL WEEK 8 REACTION ON ESQUIRE.COM: Monday Morning Cheerleader with the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and ESPN&amp;#039;s Jeffrey Chadiha on Vernon Davis COME BACK EVERY WEEK FOR THE MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL RECAP WITH TOM CHIARELLA Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/sports/a16493/niners-cardinals-monday-night-football-2012-14261046/>