The Chicago Cardinals and Their Long...

Do you know which NFL Franchise has had the same nickname for the most consecutive seasons? Can you believe that it is the Arizona Cardinals? Before moving to the desert and being called the Phoenix Cardinals, the team was in St. Louis, but it originated in the Windy City.

How could we have a series on early pro football without talking about the longest-tenured franchise in the NFL, the Cardinals? Well, wait no longer because we brought in the big gun on this one: Joe Ziemba, the leading historian on the Chicago Cardinals story. Joe gives us the details on the original NFL franchise from the Windy City right from the beginning.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame states that the Cardinals team started in 1898, but the author, historian, and host of the When Football Was Football Podcast, Joe Ziemba, says this is an error. The group, led by 17-year-old Chris O'Brien and his brother Pat, formally assembled in 1899 as the Morgan Athletic Association on the South side of Chicago near the stockyards on Morgan Street where they lived. A year later, the players joined the Morgan Athletic Club, a social club offering many other activities besides football to folk in the neighborhood. Dancs, track teams, boxing, a tavern, and baseball squads were part of the entertainment of the social club at the turn of the century.

In 1901, the O'Brien brothers started yet another social club, the Cardinal Athletic Club, and according to Joe, this is where the name of the franchise derived from and not the stories you hear of that say the University of Chicago sold them some old maroon jerseys. The football team of the Cardinal A.C. even won the 1902 Illinois State Football Championship. The years passed to around 1905, and the O'Briens and a few of the fellas joined yet another club to play ball at, the Normal Athletics, which played games at old Normal Park on the South Side at 61st and Racine. Eventually, they became a stronger team around 1915, and being so close to Racine Avenue, they ultimately incorporated as a semi-pro squad as the Racine Cardinals Pleasure Club. For short, Chris O'Brien ran the Racine Club out of an office inside one of his businesses at 59th and Racine. The Cardinals were able to rent the field for a sum of $10 per day, so passing the hat through the stands at the end of the game helped pay for the field and the players.

The team played through World War I and the Spanish Flu Pandemic. In 1919, Chris O'Brien gathered some investors so that the team could travel to other states to play in other organized teams.

In September of 1920, Jim Thorpe invited O'Brien to attend the famous meeting in Canton, Ohio, that started the APFA, which a few years later would be the National Football League. Chris O'Brien is indeed one of the founders of the League. On November 26, 1920, the Decatur Staleys and the Chicago Cardinals played in an APFA game, proving that the Cardinals and the Bears have the longest-running rivalry in the NFL. The following year, the Cardinals became the first Chicago APFA team to play the Green Bay Packers. One week later, the Bears played the Packers. So, despite what the announcers on television broadcasts say, the Bears and the Packers are the third oldest rivalry of current NFL teams.

Eventually, O'Brien allowed George Halas and the Decatur Staleys to move to Chicago and become the Bears. The Cardinals played in the NFL and were awarded the 1925 Championship Title. (More on this controversial 1925 season can be found in other stories on the NFL, here on Pigskin Dispatch, and in our book Marooned.) Chris O'Brien, however, fell on some hard times later, and in 1929, he was forced to sell the franchise to a local Doctor named David Jones.

The Good Doctor sold the franchise to Charles W. Bidwill in 1932, starting the Bidwill family's ownership up to the present day. During World War II, the team was forced to merge with the Pittsburgh Steelers due to a player shortage, which started a 29-game losing streak. The franchise gathered itself after the war and won another NFL title in 1947. Eventually, the franchise relocated to St. Louis in 1960 and again to Arizona three decades later.

To learn more about the Cardinals, please listen to Joe Ziemba's podcast, When Football Was Football, or read his excellent book, When Football Was Football: The Chicago Cardinals and the Birth of the NFL.