History
The Racine Cardinals were represented at the organizational meeting of the American Professional Football Association (APFA) in 1920. This led some early writers on pro football to think that a team from Racine, Wisconsin, had intended to join the APFA, only to drop out before the league began its first season.
But the Racine Cardinals were from Chicago, not Wisconsin. The Cardinals actually originated as a neighborhood team known as the Morgan Athletic Club in 1898. Chris O'Brien, a painting contractor, was the organizer and manager. The team then began playing at Normal Field, at the corner of Racine Avenue and Normal Boulevard, and became known as the Racine Normals.
O'Brien bought some used jerseys from the University of Chicago in 1901. The original maroon was badly faded from repeated washings. Supposedly, someone pointed that out and O'Brien responded, "It's not maroon, it's cardinal red." So the team got a new name, the Racine Cardinals.
The Cardinals disbanded in 1906 but O'Brien reorganized the team in 1913 and brought it into the APFA as a charter member in 1920. Chicago had another team, the Tigers, in the league that first season. There's a story that O'Brien challenged the Tigers to a winner-take-all game, with the loser to drop out of the APFA. The Cardinals won the game, 6-3, and the Tigers obligingly folded, according to the story. The trouble is, the Tigers played two more league games after the loss to the Cardinals; their 0-6 record probably had much more to do with their demise than the supposed challenge.
That really didn't help much, anyway. In 1921, the Decatur Staleys became the Chicago Staleys and the following year they were renamed the Bears. Perennially one of the best teams in the renamed National Football League, the Bears outplayed and outdrew the Cardinals for the better part of 40 years.
Also in 1922, a team from Racine, Wisconsin, did enter the league. To avoid confusion, the Chicago Racine Cardinals became the Chicago Cardinals.
Led by Paddy Driscoll, the Cardinals won a disputed championship in 1925. The controversy arose out of a December 6 game at Chicago between the Cardinals and the Pottsville Maroons that was hyped by O'Brien and the Chicago newspapers as being for the NFL championship.
The Cardinals were 9-1-1 going into the game, while Pottsville was 9-2-0. The Maroons won the game, 21-7, and considered themselves league champions as a result. A week later, though, NFL President Joe Carr declared that the Pottsville franchise had been forfeited because the team played a game against the Notre Dame All-Stars in Philadelphia, thus invading the territory of the Frankford Yellow Jackets.
Meanwhile. O'Brien desperately wanted a game against the Chicago Bears during their barnstorming tour with Red Grange. To keep the team intact, and to pad its record, he scheduled two more games, against the Milwaukee Badgers and the Hammond Pros. The Cardinals won both games, running their record to 11-2-1. That was good enough to win the league championship over Pottsville, which finished at 10-2-0, but it didn't really matter, since Pottsville was no longer in the league.
Nevertheless, the Maroons and their fans insisted they had won the title. Because of the controversy, O'Brien refused to accept the championship, but the Cardinals went into the NFL record books as 1925 champions, anyway.
The glory was short-lived. Driscoll went to the arch-rival Bears after the season and the Cardinals became a losing team. In 1929, O'Brien sold the franchise to Dr. David Jones.
Jones lured the great fullback, Ernie Nevers, out of a year's retirement, but didn't give him much of a supporting cast. Nevers was capable of winning a game virtually on his own. In one remarkable five-day stretch, the Cardinals beat Dayton, 19-0, and followed that with a 40-0 victory over the Bears, with Nevers scoring all 59 points.
But the Cards ended at .500 that season, slipped a game below it in 1930, and climbed a game above it in 1931. Then Nevers retired for good and they could win only two games in 1932.
That was enough for Dr. Jones, who sold the team to Charles W. Bidwill for $50,000. Bidwill was a wealthy attorney, racing stable owner, and a part owner of the Bears who had to sell his stock in that team before he could take over the Cardinals.
In the process, Bidwill also signed the so-called "Madison Street Agreement" with George Halas, the Bears' chief owner. The agreement, in effect, divided Chicago into two territories, with the Bears to play north of Madison Street, the Cardinals south of it.
Bidwill spent a lot of money trying to turn the Cardinals into champions, but they had only one winning season between 1933 and 1945. In 1946, though, they beat the Bears in the finale to finish at 6-5. Coach Jimmy Conzelman had put together a talented backfield, with Paul Christman at quarterback, Pat Harder at fullback, and Elmer Angsman and Marshall "Biggie" Goldberg at the halfback spots. The team had also added two outstanding linemen, Stan Mauldin and Buster Ramsay.
The player who put them over the top was halfback Charlie Trippi, a versatile All-American from Georgia and the Cardinals' first draft choice in 1947. Bidwill gave Trippi a three-year, $100,000 contract, making him the highest-paid NFL player since Red Grange. To make room for Trippi, Goldberg became primarily a defensive specialist, although he was also used on offense at times.
The combination of Christman, Harder, Angsman, and Trippi became known as the "Dream Backfield." With Christman throwing often enough to keep defenses honest and Harder blocking for them, the trio of halfbacks rushed for just under a thousand yards. Harder added 371 yards and 7 touchdowns, most on short plunges. He also kicked 38 extra points and 7 field goals to lead the league in scoring with 102 points.
The Cardinals and Bears were tied for the Western Conference lead when they met in the final game of the season at Comiskey Park. On the first play from scrimmage, Christmas surprised the Bears with an 80-yard touchdown pass to reserve halfback Babe Dimancheff and the Cards went on to a 30-21 victory.
Then they faced the Philadelphia Eagles on an icy Comiskey field for the NFL championship. Angsman and Trippi scored all four touchdowns on long runs in the 28-21 win. Angsman had two 70-yard runs on trap plays, while Trippi broke loose for a 44-yard run from scrimmage and added a 75-yard punt return touchdown.
Unfortunately, Bidwill had died of pneumonia in April, so he didn't see his Cardinals win the long-sought championship. His widow, Violet, ran the team with the help of her sons, Charles Jr. and William, for the next 15 years.
The Cardinals looked even better in 1948, rolling to an 11-1-record. Again, the conference championship came down to the final game of the season, against the Bears, and again the Cards beat their cross-town rivals.
The championship game was played at Philadelphia in a heavy snowstorm. As snow accumulated, it became obvious that a turnover would probably be decisive. The Eagles got it: A fumble recovery at Chicago's 17-yard line near the end of the third quarter. Four plays later, Steve Van Buren scored on a 5-yard run and Philadelphia won, 7-0.
Conzelman and Goldberg retired after that season, repeated injuries limited Christman's effectiveness, and the Cardinals descended into mediocrity and red ink. In the late 1950s, they wanted to move into Dyke Stadium, which was north of Madison Street. The Bears protested this planned invasion of their territory and NFL Commissioner Bert Bell ruled in their favor.
In the meantime, CBS was unhappy about having two teams in Chicago. The rule at the time was that a market had to be blacked out if there was a home game, which meant that the network couldn't broadcast into the country's second-largest television market for virtually all of the season.
Soon after Pete Rozelle took over as commissioner following Bell's death in 1959, Mrs. Bidwill agreed to move the team to St. Louis in exchange for a $500,000 payment from the league and the network. In St. Louis, the Cardinals shared a name and a playing field, Busch Stadium, with the National League baseball team.
Mrs. Bidwill died in 1962 and her sons took over ownership. William V. Bidwill bought out his brother in 1972 and incorporated the team in 1976. The St. Louis Cardinals had some success on the field for a couple of brief periods. They finished second, by half a game, to the Cleveland Browns in both 1964 and 1968.
With quarterback Jim Hart running Don Coryell's "Air Coryell" offense, they won two straight NFC titles, in 1974 and 1975, but lost in the first round of the playoffs each time. The Cardinals went 10-4 in 1976, but that was good only for second place in the division. Coryell was fired after they slipped to 7-7 the following season, and then came more mediocrity and worse. From 1978 through 1987, the team was above .500 just three times, and the best record over that stretch was 9-7 in 1984.
Crowds dwindled in St. Louis, as they had in Chicago. In 1988, Bill Bidwill moved the franchise to Phoenix, Arizona. Although they were renamed the Phoenix Cardinals, the team has actually played at Arizona State's Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe. Bidwill changed the name to the Arizona Cardinals in 1994.
Although they set a team record for attendance in their first season in Arizona, the Cardinals have been less successful there than in their first two homes, winning fewer than 35 percent of their games. The one high point was a 20-7 victory over the Dallas Cowboys in the wildcard round of the 1998 playoffs. It was the first playoff win for the Cardinals since their championship in 1947.