Chicago Cardinals

• 1. Introduction

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  The Chicago Cardinals are the oldest continuously operating professional football franchise in America. In 1898, a Chicago painting contractor named Chris O'Brien founded an amateur athletic club on the city's south side, and from that modest beginning grew a team that would help invent the sport as we know it. How does a team that helped found the National Football League end up packing its bags for another city? That question threads through every decade of the Cardinals' Chicago story, from a mud-caked field on Racine Avenue to the polished halls of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The Cardinals nursed a bitter, defining rivalry with a team that would become their most successful neighbor. They weathered two world wars, a flu pandemic, a color line, and the quiet heartbreak of near-empty stadiums. And they did it all in the shadow of a franchise that seemed to grow stronger with each passing year. What shaped the Cardinals in those Chicago decades, and what finally drove them out?

• 2. A Contractor's Club

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  Chris O'Brien bought used maroon uniforms from the University of Chicago in 1901, and the faded color changed everything. The dye had worn down so much that O'Brien reportedly looked at the jerseys and declared, "That's not maroon; it's cardinal red!" That offhand remark gave the team a name it carries to this day. O'Brien had started the club three years earlier as the Morgan Athletic Club, then moved his players to Normal Park on Chicago's Racine Avenue and renamed them the Racine Normals. The name "Racine Street Cardinals" followed that color revelation in 1901. The original club disbanded in 1906, mostly because local competition had dried up. A professional outfit claiming the same heritage reformed under the same name in 1913. In 1918, the team suspended operations again, this time because of World War I and the Spanish flu pandemic. Unlike most teams, the Cardinals resumed play that same year, one of the very few clubs willing and able to take the field during a national emergency.

• 3. Founding the NFL

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  In 1920, the Cardinals paid a franchise fee of $100 to join a newly organized body called the American Professional Football Association, which two years later became the National Football League. The team that would become the Chicago Bears joined alongside them. Both clubs remain the only charter members of the 1920 founding still in existence. The Bears had entered the league as the Decatur Staleys; when a team actually from Racine, Wisconsin called the Horlick-Racine Legion joined in 1922, the Cardinals were renamed the Chicago Cardinals to clear up the confusion. That same season they moved to Comiskey Park. The minutes from that first league meeting, written by someone unfamiliar with the geography of Chicago football, actually listed the Cardinals as being from Racine, Wisconsin, a small clerical error that captured the informal, improvisational spirit of professional football in its infancy.

• 4. Rivals from the Start

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  From 1920 through 1925, the Bears and the Cardinals battled to a 4-4-2 split, a record of parity that belied how much each game mattered. The Bears were dominant against every other team in those years. The Canton Bulldogs, the 1922 and 1923 champions, beat the Bears just twice across that entire six-year span. No other NFL team defeated the Bears more than once. Except the Cardinals. In the first meeting of the 1920 season, the Cardinals beat the Staleys 7-6, both teams scoring a touchdown on a fumble recovery with the Staleys missing their extra point. That single loss proved consequential. The Staleys finished 10-1-2 overall, but the Akron Pros, who went 8-0-3, claimed the title with an unblemished record in league play. Had the Staleys not dropped that game to the Cardinals, they would have entered that final contest against Akron with a stronger claim on the championship. In six of the NFL's first six seasons, the Bears-Cardinals results directly influenced who won the league title, with each team capturing one championship during that stretch.

• 5. The 1925 Controversy

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  The 1925 season ended in what may be the deepest controversy in the history of professional football. With no fixed schedule and no playoffs, the championship was decided by winning percentage alone. After losing to the Pottsville Maroons 21-7 in a Chicago snowstorm, the Cardinals found themselves in second place. To improve their standing, they quickly arranged and won two games against weaker opponents, the Milwaukee Badgers and the Hammond Pros. The tactic was technically legal under the league's loose rules at the time. But a Cardinals player named Art Folz had secretly hired four Chicago high school players to play for the Milwaukee Badgers under assumed names, guaranteeing a Cardinals win. The league sanctioned the Cardinals over that manipulation. Meanwhile, Pottsville was stripped of its title for playing an unauthorized exhibition against the Notre Dame All-Stars in Philadelphia. Rather than award the title to Chicago, the league chose not to name a 1925 champion at all. Team owner Chris O'Brien then refused the championship when it was offered to him, arguing his team had not earned it by beating Pottsville fairly. It was only after the Bidwill family purchased the franchise in 1933 that the Cardinals began formally claiming the 1925 title.

• 6. Duke Slater's Legacy

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  Duke Slater arrived in the NFL against all odds. After the first American Football League folded following its only season, Slater successfully joined the Chicago Cardinals, one of the few NFL teams willing to field African-American players in the 1920s. He was pro football's first African-American offensive lineman and one of the finest linemen of his era regardless of background. In 1928, Slater encouraged the team to sign Harold Bradley Sr., who became the NFL's second black lineman. The two played side by side in the first two games of the 1928 season before a steel plate in Bradley's leg, the result of a childhood injury, ended his career after just two games, the shortest NFL tenure among the thirteen African-American players who played before World War II. Slater's own situation was increasingly isolated. Between 1926 and 1927, NFL owners moved to mirror professional baseball's racist exclusion policies, and by 1927 every Black player had been pushed out of the league except Slater. On the 28th of November, 1929, Slater lined up in front of fullback Ernie Nevers as Nevers scored six rushing touchdowns in a 40-6 victory over the Bears, a record that still stands. Slater played all 60 minutes that day, rotating between the offensive line, the defensive line, and special teams. When he retired in 1931, he had earned All-Pro honors six times and had started 96 of the 99 games he played across both the AFL and NFL.

• 7. The Million Dollar Backfield

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  Charles Bidwill purchased the team in 1932 from Dr. David Jones, who had bought it from Chris O'Brien in 1929. Bidwill had previously been a vice president of the Chicago Bears, so his acquisition of their crosstown rivals carried a particular sting. He set about building a championship team, and by 1946 he had assembled what became known as the "Million Dollar Backfield": quarterback Paul Christman, halfbacks Charley Trippi and Elmer Angsman, and fullback Pat Harder. The signing of Trippi was considered the final piece; Bidwill had beaten the Chicago Rockets of the rival All-America Football Conference for his rights. Bidwill did not live to see it pay off. He died before the start of the 1947 season, leaving the team to his wife Violet. That year the Cardinals went 9-3 and defeated the Philadelphia Eagles 28-21 in the championship game, piling up 282 rushing yards. The following season they went 11-1 and returned to the championship game, only to lose 7-0 to the Eagles in a rematch played in a heavy snowstorm that nearly obscured the field. That 1948 championship game was the first NFL title game to be televised. Violet Bidwill subsequently married St. Louis businessman Walter Wolfner, and the team's fortunes began to decline.

• 8. Empty Stands, New League

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  The Cardinals posted only 33 wins across the entire decade of the 1950s. Their best year was 1956, when they went 7-5. Every other season landed below .500, including a 1-10-1 record in 1953. Attendance at Cardinals games had grown sparse; the Bears commanded the city, and the Cardinals were, as the source records, nearly forgotten. The team came close to bankruptcy. The Bidwills began exploring a move to another city but ran into a problem: the NFL demanded a relocation fee they were unwilling or unable to pay. So they entertained offers from outside investors, among them Lamar Hunt, Bud Adams, Bob Howsam, and Max Winter. Those talks collapsed, likely because the Bidwills were only willing to sell a minority stake while keeping control. Hunt, Adams, Howsam, and Winter then joined forces to create the American Football League. The NFL, suddenly facing a genuine competitor for markets, engineered a deal that sent the Cardinals to St. Louis, Missouri, for the 1960 season. The move also had a strategic dimension: it blocked St. Louis as a potential AFL market just as that rival league was starting play. Despite landing in a city that already had a baseball team called the St. Louis Cardinals, the football team kept its name, and locals took to calling them the "Gridbirds" for the next 27 years.