State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona will still be rocking on Monday night, even though the Cardinals are not in the playoffs. The Cardinals will host the Rams vs. Vikings Wild Card matchup on Monday night as a result of the Los Angeles wildfires. The Rams were originally scheduled to host the Vikings at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

Cardinals owner Michael Bidwell told NFL insider Ian Rapoport about what it will be like to host a playoff game for a division rival.

“It might be a little painful to hear, ‘Whose house? Rams House!,'” Bidwill joked. “But our hearts are breaking with what's going on. … It's what's best for the league, it's what's best for the team, and we have to do everything we can to make sure we have a great game.”

Bidwell shares that he thought about lessons his father taught him when the league approached him about being a possible contingency site for this game.

“It's always a good time to do the right thing,” Bidwill said. “If we can do something to help … maybe this is the only thing we can do. Let's put our energy into it and try to focus on it and make it a great experience, whether it's the players, their families or the coaches.”

The Cardinals immediately sprung into action once the league officially requested their assistance. One of the first steps they took was to send two Boeing 777 planes to pick up the Rams' staff and their families.

“It was good we could do it on such short notice,” Bidwill added.

Cardinals wasted no time preparing State Farm Stadium for Rams vs. Vikings

Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford (9) throws in the second half against the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium.
Matt Kartozian-Imagn Images

Bidwell and the Cardinals sprang into action before the NFL officially told the team to start preparing.

“I spoke to the team later that morning and said, ‘Look if this is gonna happen, let's get ahead of it,'” Bidwill said. “Let's get prepared and start thinking about everything that we'll need to be doing to make this happen.”

Bidwell noted that he had to speak with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell several times to go over logistics. Those included figuring out the ticket situation. LA uses Ticketmaster but Arizona uses SeatGeek.

“We shifted all of our attention even before the announcement to making sure that we were ready to go,” Bidwill said. “We knew that the people in their organization have been going through tremendous stress, with their families and friends that were losing everything and we wanted to be as thoughtful as we could. And then we realized the families were coming. It was like, OK, that's a whole other layer to this.”

Bidwell even asked his staff to put together lists of everything the Rams could possibly need. That included lists of active babysitters and even ice cream parlors.

“We tried to think of everything,” Bidwell concluded.

Rams vs. Vikings will kick off at 8:15PM ET on Monday.