RF365’s unofficial history of the Cardinals

By Os Davis  |   Wednesday, May 09, 2007  |  Comments( 2 )

Arizona Cardinals
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Truly no introduction is needed for that strange football phenomenon known as the Chicago/St.Louis/Phoenix/Arizona Cardinals. The oldest continuous football club in existence, this team spans back to the 19th century. Forget automobiles: This goes back to before baseball's American League existed.

And yet, in more than a century of play, no team inspires more apathy as it settles into a new city every generation or so. The history of the Cardinals goes well beyond the Detroit Lions' 50 years without a championship and into the realm of suicidal Chicago Cubs backers.

The following is a history of the beleaguered franchise, mercifully kept as brief as possible to minimize suffering. Parents are advised not to let small children read further.

1898: The Racine (Chicago) Normals are formed and produce American sports' oddest team name ever. Yes, yes, they were named for their park, Normal Park (giggle), but who remembers that? Preseason analysis puts the Normals dead last in power polls across the 19th century's version of the Internet, a tightly interwoven network of tin cans and string stretching across two neighboring houses in Chicago.

1901: The Normals become the Cardinals after donning red uniforms gotten from the Chicago Maroons. Perhaps this is where it all started to go wrong, for a team named "Maroons" would come back to haunt the Cardinals soon enough.

1906-1913: Thanks to a "lack of competition," the Chicago Cardinals disbanded for a length of time. In terms of won-loss record, this stands as the franchise's most successful seven-year run.

1920: The NFL is formed, and the Racine Cardinals more properly become the Chicago Cardinals. Over the course of their grueling six-game schedule, the Cardinals go 3-2-1, but are shut out three times in those wild, high-scoring days. In fact, the Cardinals opened in Week 2 to play a scoreless tie with the cross-town rivals Chicago Tigers. In that game, the Cardinals win on a disputed call. Though the Tigers appear to have crossed the goal line on fourth-and-1 in the fourth quarter, the referees miss the call. In the offseason owner meetings, Cardinal ownership begins a long tradition of voting against referees' use of instant replay.

1925: Ah, what can be said about 1925? Truly the stuff of legend (and soon to be a motion picture in a multiplex near you) was that year in which the Cardinals franchise almost took home its first NFL title. Newly arrived into the NFL from the Anthracite League (!), the legendary Pottsville Maroons went 10-2 that year, outscoring opponents by an average score of 23-3. Similarly, Pottsville took apart the Cardinals in the final game of the regular season in Chicago, 21-7.

The Maroons' reward upon clinching the NFL title against the Cardinals was to play an exhibition game (and collect some fat gate receipts) against the Notre Dame All-Stars in Philadelphia's expansive Shibe Park. Pottsville won the game, 9-7, but lost a war against the Frankford Yellow Jackets, who successfully argued to league president Joseph Carr that the exhibition game had infringed upon Frankford's territorial rights. Carr stripped Pottsville of the title, suspended the team from the league, and named the Cardinals champions of the league.

To their credit, the Cardinals did not accept the title.

1926: The Cardinals begin a 17-season 58-113-15 run. Maybe they should have accepted that championship after all.

1932: Charles W. Bidwill, Sr., then-Bears vice president, buys the Cardinals for $50,000, promising fans to make the Cardinals the second-best team in Chicago. The Bidwell Era begins; typically in sports reportage, the word "era" is overused, but here, it's utterly appropriate with what seems like millennium of football played with the excitement and unpredictability of erosion. Perhaps the Bidwell Age would be more appropriate.

1943: The Cardinals cap a winless season by losing to the cross-town Chicago Bears as 97-year-old Bronko Nagurski runs up 87 carries and leads to a bizarre monologue by Anthony Hopkins that belongs in a different movie, but ended up in the utterly forgettable Hearts of Atlantis.

1944: Because of the war, the Cardinals decide to pool their depleted talent with that of the league's other perpetual beatdogs, the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Card-Pitt amalgamation succeeded brilliantly, with the Cardinals going from an 0-10 season to, um, 0-10.

1947: This time, the Cardinals beat their "sworn enemies," the Bears. After going 9-3 in the regular season, Paul Christman and Co. won the title game over the Philadelphia Eagles. Chicago cheered as the city celebrated its first title. Unless you count the seven won by Chicago Bears/Staleys beginning in 1921.

1950: Curly Lambeau is named coach. He quits in 1951, for a record of 7-15.

The 1950s: The Cardinals post one winning record: 7-5 in 1956.

1960: In a bid to keep the upstart American Football League out of the major market, the Bidwells and the NFL teamed to unleash the Cardinals on the good people of St. Louis. Few in Chicago notice.

1964: Cardinal fans thrill to seeing a team composed of exciting young talent maturing into dominant superstars go all the way to the title. Unfortunately, this is discovered to be the St. Louis baseball Cardinals.

1973: Terry Metcalf is drafted by the Cardinals in Round 3, thereby giving football-card collectors a St. Louis card good for more than use in bicycle spokes to make that bap-bap-bap sound.

1973-1977: Don Coryell is named Cardinals coach, immediately installing a sort of proto-Air Coryell system with the classic Mel Gray as primary receiver, Metcalf catching 50 passes a year, and at QB ... Jim Hart. OK, so he's no Dan Fouts, but Coryell headed up two 10-win and one 11-win team for two playoff appearances in what was certainly the high point of St. Louis Cardinals history.

1981: Neil Lomax, figured to go in the first round of the draft, slips to the Cardinals in the second round. An astute move by St. Louis results in getting a two-time all-star and starter for much of the '80s. The Cardinals even post a couple of winning seasons.

1982: Thanks to a 2-1 record posted by replacement players, the Cardinals go 5-4, good enough for a playoff spot in the free-for-all tournament the NFL ran that postseason. The Cardinals drew the Green Bay Packers and...ah, come on, you know. At the offseason owners' meeting, Bidwell votes to lock out players annually for perpetuity.

1988: Several million Arizonans who had lobbied for a professional sports franchise for years are disappointed when Phoenix settles for the Cardinals.

1990-1993: The Joe Bugel Era; Cardinals go 20-44.

1994: The Phoenix Cardinals are renamed the Arizona Cardinals, causing Flagstaff to exclaim en masse, "Wait a minute, there's an NFL team in Phoenix?"

1998: In what is still cited as the brightest moment in the brief Phoenix/Arizona Cardinals' history, Jake "The Snake" Plummer (shed a nostalgic tear) leads the team to a 9-7 finish, the team's best record since 1984 and enough to squeak 'em into the playoffs. Arizona dominates Troy Aikman's Dallas Cowboys in the Wild Card game to the tune of 20-7 in the contest forever known informally as "That One Time the Cardinals Won a Playoff Game." The 'Pokes have yet to win another playoff game (though for that matter, neither have the Cardinals) and when talk begins 20 years down the road about a curse covering the Cowboys, the Cardinals will figure heavily in the mythology. To wit...

2003: Emmitt Smith comes to the desert, hoping to A) turn the club's fortunes around, B) get revenge on Dallas once in a while, C) extend his career a couple of years well past his prime, or ... ah, forget it, it's (C). In his career as an Arizona Cardinal, Smith runs up 357 carries for 1,193 yards, a 3.3 average and 11 touchdowns. On the other side, modern-day Cardinal fans got to see a Hall of Famer. For a little while.

2005: Cardinals General Manager Rod Graves: "We believe that by signing a proven winner like Kurt Warner, we can take this team to the Super Bowl, like the Rams did with Joe Namath."

2006: The Cardinals draft Matt Leinart, bringing back fond memories of the Neil Lomax Era. Those are fond memories, aren't they?

2006: Dennis Green becomes the greatest YouTube sports hero since Tecmo Bowl Bo Jackson with his Chernobyl-level meltdown after his team's Chernobyl-level meltdown in what Mike Tirico prospectively called "one of the biggest wins in recent franchise history," namely a Week 6 Monday night game against the Chicago Bears. A win would have put the Cards at 2-4. Huge game.

2009: As attendance continues to dwindle despite a 21st-century stadium that has Jerry Jones deep in the depths of arena envy, the Bidwells finally decide a new direction, attitude and even a new name is needed for the team. After a 27-man committee considers names for nine months, the group decides to borrow a page from Stanford's book. The franchise is thereafter forever (OK, it's a short forever) known as ... the Arizona Cardinal!

2015: The renaming doesn't catch on and the Cardinal departs for the city that new NFL commissioner Condoleezza Rice states "most deserves this team," Los Angeles. Two years later, the Seattle Seahawks settle in, are reborn as the Arizona Phoenixes and go on to dominate through Super Bowls LX and LXI.

Following the Arizona Cardinals year 'round on RealFootball365.com. God help us.
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About Os Davis

Os Davis has taken a twisted route to get to RealFootball365.com in his nearly 17 years in professional writing, working in any number of capacities in the sportswriting, news reporting and film criticism worlds. In print media, Os has served as editor at a few publications, including Albuquerque's...
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