Everyone Laughed When They Heard The Name Cardinals…
February 1st, 2009I must confess I an Eagles Fan for over 15 years since I am originally from PA but the Arizona Cardinals story is a lesson to learn in life and in your business.
The Cardinals born in an Irish neighborhood in Chicago 111 years ago have spread football mediocrity from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River to the Sonoran Desert.
While the Steelers had a hometown which took root in Pittsburgh, acquiring the city’s gritty, blue-collar persona, the Cardinals wandered from north to south in search of a home.
Before this season’s improbable run past Atlanta, Carolina and Philadelphia, the Cardinals had two playoff victories in their entire history: 1) the 1947 NFL championship game against Philadelphia 2) in a 1998 wild-card upset of the Dallas Cowboys.
Here’s the story that grabs at our heart…
The Cardinals were owned by the Bidwill family since 1932, but their lineage dates to 1898. As I understand the story… a group of men going by the name of the Morgan Athletic Club began playing football on Chicago’s South Side.
Three years later, team owner Chris O’Brien, a local painting contractor, bought some faded jerseys from the University of Chicago and, as the story goes, declared “That’s not maroon, it’s Cardinal red.”
Thus was born the nickname that would for decades be emblematic of professional football futility.
The Cardinals’ greatest success did not come until the aftermath of the war, when the 1947 team went 9-3 under coach Jimmy Conzelman and beat the Eagles for the NFL title. Sadly, Bidwill didn’t live to see the triumph. He died of pneumonia in April of that year.
The following season, the Cardinals were 11-1, but lost to Philadelphia for the crown.
Bidwill’s widow Violet inherited the team and she and her second husband, Walter Wolfner, were in charge in the troubled days that led to the move to St. Louis in 1960.
The team was losing money after 37 seasons at Comiskey and wanted to play its games at Northwestern. But Halas had an agreement from years earlier that the Cardinals would never play north of Madison Street.
So in 1960, the move from a mostly indifferent Chicago was made. Bidwill looked at Memphis, Jacksonville, Baltimore and — most of all — Phoenix. Oddly, Phoenix had nearly landed the Eagles in the mid-1980s, before the fans in Philadelphia made so much noise that the team stayed put.
Phoenix officials made sure any negotiations with Bidwill were done quietly. The league approved the move to Arizona on March 15, 1988.
But the team had barely arrived in town before it began to alienate fans. Bidwill set first-season ticket prices at an average of $38, the highest in the league at the time. Although he lowered it a bit to $36 the next year, it still was tops in the NFL.
Bidwill, notorious for his old-fashioned contract beliefs and penny-pinching ways, let some of his best players — offensive tackle Lomas Brown, fullback Larry Centers and linebacker Jamir Miller — get away from that team.
Then the Cardinals had a losing record every season until 2007, when first-year coach Ken Whisenhunt’s club went 8-8.
Bill Bidwill, now 77, smiled broadly as he hoisted the Halas Trophy for the NFC; it was a rare moment of triumph for a man whose many charitable deeds went by unknown. Bidwell’s ownership has long been vilified by many NFL fans in Arizona even though he is described by many as not a ‘flashy person’.
That love-hate relationship Arizona had for Bidwill and the Cardinals is all-love now, and in a city that’s one of the hardest hit by the economy’s problems, it’s a welcome diversion.
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Thanks for your comments and the facts are accurate as of the date of the post on 2-1-09.
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