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6 January 2022
The Cardinals are the oldest professional football club in terms of continuous operation in the United States. Along with the Chicago Bears, they are one of two charter members of the National Football League still in existence.
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Founded in 1898, the Morgan Athletic Club was formed by a group of neighborhood players from Chicago’s South Side. Chris O’Brien, a Chicago painting and building contractor, purchased the team and relocated it to Normal Field on Racine Avenue. Before 1901, the team was known as the Racine Normals, but O’Brien bought used jerseys from the University of Chicago. He called the faded maroon clothing “Cardinal red”, so the team became the Racine Street Cardinals. In 1920, the team became a charter member of the American Professional Football Association (APFA), which was renamed the National Football League (NFL) two years later. As the Racine Cardinals, they entered the league in 1922, but changed their name to the Chicago Cardinals in order to avoid confusion with the Horlick-Racine Legion, who had entered the league two years earlier.
In 1920, the American Professional Football Association, the direct forerunner of the National Football League (NFL), began to play. At that time, the Cardinals, who were based in Chicago their home city, had to defeat another team named the Tigers to get the territorial rights in Chicago.
Their first NFL championship came in 1925 when they edged out the Pottsville Maroons. During their first 26 seasons in the league, the Cardinals experienced only minimal success on the playing field. In 1929, the Cardinals’ superstar running back Ernie Nevers produced all 40 points – an NFL record that stands today – in their Thanksgiving Day game victory over the Chicago Bears.
Charles W. Bidwill bought the team in1932, which began a continuous period of family ownership. The team won an NFL championship in 1947 and the NFL Western Division title in 1948.
After 40 years in Chicago, the franchise moved to St. Louis in 1960 where the team played until 1987.
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In 1988, William Bidwill selected Phoenix as the new home city, where they played at Sun Devil Stadium. The Cardinals opened the state-of-the-art University of Phoenix Stadium in 2006 where they found instant success in their new home, winning multiple division titles and an appearance in Super Bowl XLIII.
In March 1994, Bill Bidwill renamed the team the Arizona Cardinals due to fan preference and the fact that the Arizona Cardinals never actually played in Phoenix.
Starting in 1947, the team’s logo was a cardinal perched on a football’s laces. In 2005, the team announced its first major changes in a century. A new version of the cardinal-head logo looks sleeker and meaner than its predecessor. Fans derisively referred to the previous version as a “parakeet”.
While being the oldest team in the NFL, the Cardinals are also one of the least successful franchises in league history, having won just two NFL championships (1925 and 1947) since the team’s founding in 1898. That doesn’t deter avid Arizona Cardinals from strongly supporting their sports heroes through thick and thin.
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