IStock Photo 7901657 © Andrew Soundarajan

A whole year later it still causes some incredulous eye-rubbing: wait, the Arizona Cardinals made the Super Bowl? Who let this happen? All the other teams must have caught typhoid fever or, at the very least, an acute case of the “dropsies.”

Maybe it was just a fluke and football fans can move on with unmolested sensibilities. But the Cardinals' vacation from the bottom of Death Valley was not limited to last year. The denizens of the desert repeated as NFC West champions with a 10-6 record in 2009, an astonishing accomplishment for a team that had brought playoffs to Phoenix as frequently as they did snow angels. In fact, the odds are against any football team trying to reach the playoffs a season after a heartbreaking championship loss.

In the last 10 seasons, the odds that the Super Bowl loser missed the playoffs the following year were 1 in 1.43 (70%). Expand that all the way back to 1970 and the odds decrease to 1 in 3.33.

Talk about extreme sports. What's up with that huge change? In 1969, 26 teams vied for just 8 playoff positions (one in 3.25 teams qualified). The introduction of the wild card allowed even some 2nd-place teams to make the playoffs, and since 2002, 32 teams have played musical, bruisical chairs for 12 slots (or one in 2.66). So pure numbers certainly can’t explain it. Perhaps it’s the Super Bowl Loser Curse, revved up in alliance with video game company EA Sports’ “Madden Curse,” creating a hyperbolic force of superstition scarier than a grizzly bear on a hovercraft.

All this, and yet it is the historically lowly Cardinals who surmounted the sadness of a Super Bowl loss with another playoff run, something not even the 18-1 Patriots of 2007-2008 could do. This year, after the Redbirds’ overtime win over the Packers in the opening round, handicappers gave Arizona the worst Super Bowl odds of any remaining team at 14 to 1, with only a 13 to 2 chance of even earning their certificate of participation in the Super Bowl in Miami.

But twice in NFL history—both times nearly 40 years ago—the loser vaulted back and won the whole megillah the following season. After the 1970 Cowboys blew a late lead to Johnny Unitas and the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl V, they rolled over the Dolphins in Super Bowl VI. And former running back Mercury Morris can't help but perennially remind us of the Fins' subsequent season: a 17-0 record capped off by a Super Bowl VII triumph over the Washington Redskins.

Save for a win, the next best result, mathematically, is—gulp—another Super Bowl loss. The Vikings, Broncos, and Bills are teams who earned this dubious distinction, and did so with legendary winning quarterbacks Fran Tarkenton, John Elway, and Jim Kelly. That's quite the passing pedigree, bred from finals failure. (Upstate New York remembers all too painfully that Kelly and the Buffalo Bills lost four straight Super Bowls. Naturally, in the fifth year they had had enough and missed the playoffs entirely.)

Maybe bad playoff results plague teams that lose the Super Bowl because just getting there is such a strain, physically and psychologically. There is only one greater fate than losing the Big Game. Anything short of a title…and you've peaked in your own mind. However, such a zenith for the Cardinals, considering their past, wasn't half bad.