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Fellow NFC East fans, rejoice. The division will never be the same.

The Arizona Cardinals have one last lame-duck season in our exclusive club, and then, finally, they can't embarrass us anymore. I don't mean to speak for the Cowboys, Eagles, Giants and Redskins, but if they won't say it, I will:

Get out, you losers, and stay out.

Every team in the division has been to a Super Bowl, but you. Every team sells out its stadium, but you. Every team has a rivalry, but you.

And don't tell me the Cowboys are your rival. Your pathetic owner, Bill Bidwill, sat in the recent NFL realignment meetings and said he needed the Cowboys on his home schedule. He said if the Cowboys don't come, his fans won't, either. He said the Cowboys put people in his seats, and here I always thought it was his job to do that. He told the league that if he has to leave for the NFC West, the Cowboys should have to come with him. And thank heavens the owners looked at him and laughed.

Listen, Bill, we're done carrying you. I think back at the NFC East over the last 30 years, and I barely think of the Cardinals at all. I think of Redskins-Cowboys and Cowboys-Giants and Eagles-Redskins and Redskins-Giants and Eagles-Giants and Eagles-Cowboys. Those are the games that still make anyone who grew up in the I-95 corridor (like me) froth at the mouth. The Cardinals games, on the other hand, were almost always afterthoughts. When you played the Big Red (or whatever they were called), you didn't fear them; you feared yourself. You feared a letdown. You feared the upset. You didn't play free. That's why we want them out. Yesterday.

I'm not saying they didn't have their moments. St. Louis, when baseball season was finally over, wasn't a bad football town. They had a great radio station (KMOX), and they had some players to die for. If I were to list the top 13 Cardinals of all-time, I'd say all but one starred in St. Louis. You're talking Larry Wilson, Mel Gray, Terry Metcalf, Jim Hart, Conrad Dobler, Dan Dierdorf, Roy Green, Jim Ottis, O.J. Anderson, Jackie Smith, Neil Lomax and Jim Bakken (keep reading to find out who lucky No. 13 is). Of course, 10 1/2 of those 12 players played offense -- Green played both ways -- which was the main problem. They might've been called the Cardiac Cards, but that's because they needed to score 40 or so to win. They were unbalanced; that was their flaw. That, and their dirt-cheap owner.

Bidwill only hired one great head coach in the last 30 years: Don Coryell. And he couldn't keep him. They won division titles under Coryell in '74 and '75, and, even then, there were mitigating circumstances. The Cowboys had a rare down year in '74, opening the way for St. Louis, and the Cardinals cheated to win the division in '75, when referees ruled that Gray caught a ball against the Redskins that he clearly dropped. Of course, each of those two years, the Cardinals were blown out in the first round. They never won a playoff game in St. Louis, and the fans in that city constantly complained about an East Coast bias. And that's when we wanted them out of the division, way back then.

Not that it was fair to St. Louis that they moved. The city didn't trust Bidwill, and didn't support him -- but they didn't deserve to be abandoned like that. Bidwill took the franchise to Phoenix, where he kept trying to copy the rest of the division. He hired the Redskins' Joe Bugel, which didn't work, and he hired Philadelphia's Buddy Ryan, which didn't work. He changed the name from Phoenix Cardinals to Arizona Cardinals, which didn't work. He had one superb player (Aeneas Williams is lucky No. 13), and although they finally won a playoff game in '98, the rest of the organization broke down. Bidwill's ticket prices were too high, and he wouldn't pay his stars, and he broke up the '98 team (letting the heart and soul of the unit, Larry Centers, leave). Since then, there have been injuries, and, as usual, the Cardinals continue to bring up the rear.

It's amazing, really, because they should have the best home-field advantage in the division. Other than the Cowboys, three teams have to travel 2,000-plus miles to get to Arizona, and the games are in the desert heat, and no one takes them seriously. These are set-up games. But the Cardinals rarely win. Yes, they themselves have to travel East to play in the cold, which is also difficult, yet they rarely win those games either. It has always been a poor fit, the Cardinals in the NFC East. The Cardinals and four proud franchises. The Cardinals and four teams with a chance.

I was sitting here trying to think of the greatest and most famous Cardinals game of all time, and it hit me: Jerry Maguire!

In the movie, Rod Tidwell made that catch to beat the Cowboys, and the team had to show Rod the money. Come to think of it, it was just another bad Cardinals contract negotiation. It never ends, just never ends.

Later, losers.

Tom Friend is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at tom.friend@espnmag.com.