The Arizona Cardinals just might be the one NFL team to have the most team names.
No, not nicknames such as “Red Sea,” “the Cards,” or the “Gridbirds.” Official team names. In all, the franchise has had eight team names since it began as the “Morgan Athletic Club” located in Chicago in 1898.
RELATED: CARDINALS NAMED AFTER THE COLOR – NOT THE BIRD
The Cardinals are the second-longest continuation of an active pro football club in North America behind the Toronto Argonauts of the “Canadian Football League,”
which began in 1873. The Cardinals began in Chicago and have played under five different team names in this city alone. They are a charter member of the “American Professional Football Association,” which began in 1920. The name was later changed to the “National Football League” (NFL) in 1922.
Sharing Chicago
From 1922 to 1943 and from 1945 to 1959, this franchise was known as the Chicago Cardinals and was not the only game in town. They shared the city’s affection for professional football with the Chicago Bears and, for a short time, the Chicago Tigers. The Cardinals preceded both of these teams as a Chicago-based ballclub.
The Bears began as a company team for the A.E. Staley Starch Company located in Decatur, Illinois. They were called the Decatur Staleys in order to get some national name recognition for the company’s products. After a single season, the owner decided a football team was too costly and gave the team to factory employee George Halas, the team’s coach. He told Halas that maybe a larger city might be better, such as nearby Chicago. Mr. Staley gave Halas $5,000 to continue for one more season as long as they continued to be called the Staleys.
Halas did just that, and moved the Chicago Staleys into Cubs Park (later renamed Wrigley Field), home of the baseball Chicago Cubs. After the 1921 season, when Staley’s money ran out, he renamed the squad the Chicago Cubs in honor of his landlord. After a month, he asserted that if baseball players were cubs, then football players should be considered bears.
In 1922, the Chicago Bears were born.
Cubs Park held just over 41,000 and was located in the northern portion of Chicago. Meanwhile, the Cardinals played their home games at Normal Park, which was a small stadium that had wooden bleachers and was a place that held both local baseball games and had enough room to line out a full football field.
Eventually, the Cardinals started playing their home games at Cominsky Park on the Southside of Chicago, home of the Chicago White Sox professional baseball team. Several renovations were made to increase the seating from 28,000 to 46,550 beginning in 1950.
Despite being a charter member of the NFL, the Cardinals have only captured two championships in 1925 and 1947. And the 1925 title was claimed under controversy. Meanwhile, the crosstown Bears had won seven league titles going into the 1950s when the NFL merged three teams from the rival league, the “All-America Football Conference.”
While the Bears drew good crowds, the Cardinals struggled at the gate and finding a consistent fanbase. Their best attendance was when they hosted the Bears, and the heavy-hitters in the league, such as the New York Football Giants, Green Bay Packers, and Washington Redskins. At the time, each visiting club was supposed to get 40% of the gate, or a minimum guarantee of $20,000 if the gate was sparse.
Rarely did the Cardinals pay out 40%, and in fact, in a lot of cases, they could not write a $20,000 check to the visiting ballclub to cover the guarantee.
Back then, the visiting club’s travel expenses included train fare for players, coaches, trainers, and some front office personnel, hotel rooms, several meals, and some laundry incidentals. As soon as the team returned home, game checks to their own players were due. The visitor’s share of the gate at most stadiums usually covered all of this.
In 1949, the Bears drew almost as many patrons for their seven home games as the Cardinals had for all 14 contests, home and away. Which means, not only did they suffer at home, but when the Cardinals were on the road, few bothered to show and weren’t much of an attraction.
Enter the Wolfner’s
The Cardinals were bought by Charlie Bidwill in 1932 from Dr. David Jones, with operations beginning the following year. Bidwill later passed away before the 1947 season, and the team then became the property of his wife, Violet Bidwill. She remarried in 1949 to Walter Wolfner, who became the team’s managing director.
Charlie Bidwill and George Halas got along great, despite running franchises in the same league and same city. But Walter Wolfner and Halas were oil and water. They often aired out their differences in the local papers and had lots of disagreements despite Violet being the principal owner and running the team.
The Cardinals struggled despite playing in a large stadium with seating for 47,400.
Wolfner came up with the idea that the team might start discussing relocation to a non-NFL city and then erase having to compete with not only another NFL team in the same city, but a very successful franchise whose rosters were usually full of college stars that patrons came out in droves to see.
The year was 1957. Wolfner mulled over his idea to seek out a new place for the Cardinals to play, and the franchise could make money and survive. He had roots in St. Louis as he made his fortune as a coffee broker.
Violet wasn’t fond of leaving the area since she was born and raised in Illinois. Wolfner came up with the idea to simply move within the region instead. He contacted Northwestern University in nearby Evanston, IL, to see if perhaps the Cardinals could begin playing in their outdoor venue, Dyche Stadium, located on the campus.
When this stadium was constructed, it was considered one of the most optimum college football venues in the country. Seating had been planned so that the grandstands were closer to the field than in most outdoor arenas. It was designed to house 47,130 patrons.
Evanston was a suburb just 33 miles due north of Chicago and, like most of the “Windy City,” was situated along the western shores of Lake Michigan.
Over the history of the NFL, numerous clubs have called a pro baseball venue or a college football stadium home, either permanently or as a temporary measure. In the college stadiums, a track often encircled the football field so that the venue had multiple uses. Dyche Stadium did not, and was one of the reasons that the crowd sat so close to the action.
The administration of Northwestern was not only intrigued by the Cardinals’ intentions but was also interested in formulating a lease for use on Sundays. Now, the school could make some coin on a day that their stadium usually sat empty. Wolfner did a local study to gauge the interest of the business leaders of Evanston, since the majority of businesses during this time closed on Sundays. He found that businesses welcomed the fact that another team meant another day of scores of people who would spend money in their town, and they could open on the six or seven Sundays a year.
After preliminary discussions, the Cardinals needed to get a two-thirds vote from the NFL owners before they could proceed with a lease agreement, which the majority had already been hashed out with the university.
In the conclusion of this story, Northwestern University was set to sign a lease for the Chicago Cardinals’ home games. Then, a document titled “The Madison Street Agreement” was introduced, which changed everyone’s plans.
What was this “agreement”? Between what parties?
Barry Shuck is a pro football historian and a member of the Professional Football Researchers Association
