The Arizona Cardinals are trying to "protect the nest." This means they'd like University of Phoenix Stadium to continue to sell out, and to do so with as few opposing fans as possible.

In the past two seasons, there was little concern about this since the team sold out every home game. But with ticket sales a bit slower as the third season approaches, the Cardinals are requiring fans who want to buy tickets to the Dallas game on Oct. 12 to also buy tickets for the Aug. 7 exhibition opener vs. New Orleans. Cardinals fans have "created a decisive home-field advantage" the past two years, and the team wants to keep it that way by discouraging single-game ticket sales to Dallas Cowboys fans, team spokesman Mark Dalton said.

"Our goal is to have as many Cardinal fans in the stadium as possible," Dalton said.

In terms of overall ticket sales, "We're a little slower than we were at this point" last year, Dalton said, citing the slowing economy. Dalton estimated about 58,000 season tickets have been sold. Ideally, the Cardinals would like to sell about 60,000 season tickets and hold back 3,000 or so to sell for individual games.

"If we don't get to that threshold, then there will be a few more individual single-game tickets available," Dalton said.

The Cowboys fans are still gonna be there in full force....Sorry Cardinals

This is comical for one reason. When the Cardinals were relocated from the NFC East to the NFC West, their main argument against the move is that they only sold out one home game a year, against the Cowboys. They didn't want to lose the revenue from that game so to soften the blow, Dallas agreed to play there in the preseason for 10 straight years, all which were sellouts. Now they want to keep Dallas fans out after Jerry Jones and the Cowboys organization bent over backwards to help that sorry ass franchise make money? Kind of ironic, isn't it?