It’s official, the love of my life Arizona Cardinals leading quarterback Kurt Warner declared his retirement today. The only thing left to do is pray he pulls a Favre and returns anyway in the fall.

As most of you know, Kurt is my absolute favorite NFL quarterback. I’ve only mentioned him in about, oh, 350 out of the 450 articles published to date. He’s even been the main feature of quite a few of those!

When I first started Stiletto Sports, I knew quite a bit about football but had not pledged alligance to any team. But last year, the Cardinals end-of-season Cinderella story and Super Bowl run endeared me to them and I became a Cardinals girl. And my love carried through this season.

In a lot of ways, you could say that Kurt made me a football fanatic. I was only mildly interested before, and even running a sports website had not made me all excited about the thought of 17 Sundays of Football. But Kurt did. It opened my eyes to watching the game—and no, not just because he is hot. I started to really get into the plays and understanding the teams offense and defense–something I never thought I would give a rats ass about. Nothing made me happier every Sunday than watching Kurt complete a pass to Larry Fitzgerald.

When they were knocked out of the post-season by the NFC Champs New Orleans Saints, I was devastated. But that doesn’t compare to how sad I am today!

Backup QB Matt Leinart is expected to step up to fill in the role.  I am excited for Matty. He was an excellent QB at USC (where Mr Mark Sanchez just came from!) and I do love him. But no one can compare to Kurt in my mind. A great leader. A great QB. A great man.

Farewell.

The Kurt Warner Story

Unfortunately I have to cut, what was about to be an amazing tribute to Kurt, short, because of some crisis at my day job. Because apparently I am an on-call doctor now.

For more about Kurt and my love for him, check out SportsMan of Style: Kurt Warner and Sporstmen of style: Arizona Cardinals

Also, AJC.com has a great tribute farewell piece about him too!

And of course, ESPN’s Goodbye Kurt Warner piece

About the author: Jennifer Taglione is the owner of this fabulous website Stiletto Sports. Despite writing well over 500 posts, she still maintains that she is not a sports writer! She is however a huge fan of Kurt Warner, Larry Fitzgerald, Mark Sanchez, the Celtics, and totally kicks butt on March Madness brackets! Connect with her by following her on Twitter @StilettoSportsJ and subscribing to her weekly newsletter. For more info check out the About the Editor page!

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