Support for Cards fuels prank

The Arizona Cardinals have been on fire in the NFL playoffs -- literally, in the case of Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb's front lawn at his offseason home in Chandler, Ariz.

Two Cardinals fans hung their team's flag in a tree and burned "Go Cards," "Go Kurt," and "I heart AZ" in McNabb's yard with diesel fuel, Chandler police Sgt. Joe Favazzo said Tuesday.

Favazzo said the fans hung the flag Thursday -- three days before Arizona beat Philadelphia in the NFC Championship Game -- and McNabb laughed it off and even left it hanging.

Then the fans returned Saturday and left a cardboard box in the driveway with "Go Cards" written on one side and "Beat Philly" on the other. McNabb laughed that off, too, when he discovered it at about midnight, Favazzo said.

But McNabb stopped laughing when he went outside Saturday morning, smelled diesel fuel and realized someone had burned Cardinals cheers into his lawn, causing about $2,000 in damage.

The perpetrators weren't hard to find. Favazzo said officers found an address label on the box that had been left, and it led to Chandler resident Rex Perkins, 37, who later admitted to the pranks. His co-worker, Ryan Hanlon, 28, also 'fessed up.

Perkins and Hanlon were fingerprinted, photographed and cited for misdemeanor criminal damage.

• OBAMA GETS GAME BALL -- President Barack Obama is a Chicago Bears fan, but he'll be rooting for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl, said Steelers owner Dan Rooney, who on Monday gave a ball from Sunday's AFC title game to Obama.

"He's a Bears fan first," Rooney told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "But he's a Steelers fan. He's said it, and all his staff, they're rooting for us" in the Super Bowl.

Rooney and his son, Jim, presented the football to Obama at a black-tie dinner at the Washington Hilton that Obama held for Arizona Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate he defeated in November who is a fan of the Cardinals, Pittsburgh's opponent in the Super Bowl.

• KID TO DENTIST: STICK IT -- After Detroit Red Wings forward Henrik Zetterberg gave 14-year-old Chicagoan Kalan Plew his game-used stick from the Winter Classic played against the Chicago Blackhawks at Wrigley Field on New Year's Day, a man dressed as a security guard swindled the kid out of the stick and sold it for $100 to North Carolina dentist Robert Pappert in a men's room, the Detroit Free Press reported.

The Plews went to the Chicago Tribune's "What's Your Problem?" with the story, and the Red Wings sent Kalan a replacement stick signed by Zetterberg. But Pappert also saw the story and returned the original stick to the kid.

Now, the Tribune reports, the youngster has decided he'll keep both sticks.

"If it didn't have the autograph, I'm sure he'd put it back in the box and send it to (Pappert)," dad Marc Plew said.

But the Blackhawks have sent Pappert a Patrick Kane-autographed stick. Which is good, because he's a Chicago fan -- the Zetterberg stick was for his wife.

COMPILED BY TODD DEWEY LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL