Arizona Cardinals
The Arizona Cardinals are a National Football League team based in Tempe, Arizona. The Cardinals are the oldest existing American football club in the United States, and are a charter member of the NFL.
The Cardinals are the oldest existing football club in the United States, beginning as an amateur athletic club team in Chicago, Illinois named the Morgan Athletic Club. They began to field a pro team even before the founding of the NFL. Located on Racine Avenue in Chicago, they became known for a while as the Racine Cardinals.
The team disbanded in 1906 due mostly to a lack of local competition. They were reformed in 1913 by Chris O'Brien. They were forced to suspend operations for a second time in 1918 due to World War I and the outbreak of the Spanish Flu Pandemic. They resumed operations later in the year, and have operated continuously since then.
The team became a charter member of the American Professional Football Association (which became the NFL in 1922) in 1920, for the franchise fee of $100. The team was renamed the Chicago Cardinals in 1922 after a team from Racine, Wisconsin entered the league. That season the team moved into Comiskey Park.
In 1932 the team was purchased by Charles W. Bidwill, Sr., then a vice president of the Chicago Bears. The team has been under the ownership of the Bidwell family since then.
The Cardinals won their first NFL championship in 1925, finishing the season with a record of 11-2-1 (until the 1933 season, the league champion was determined solely by win-loss percentage). The team posted a winning record only twice in the twenty years (1931 and 1935) after their championship.
In 1944, owing to player shortages caused by World War II, the Cardinals and Pittsburgh Steelers merged for one year and were known as the "Card-Pitts," or "Carpets."
The Cardinals won their only NFL championship game in 1947 (28-21 over the Philadelphia Eagles) with their "Million-Dollar Backfield," which included quarterback Paul Christman and halfback Charley Trippi. They advanced to the championship game the next season, but lost 7-0 in a rematch with the Eagles.
In 1960 the team moved to St. Louis. During this period, two big-league teams of that name existed in the city. Sports fans and local news broadcasters got into the habit of calling them "the football Cardinals" or "the baseball Cardinals" to distinguish the two. The change in scenery did little to alter the team's fortunes. During the Cardinals' stay in St. Louis, they advanced to the playoffs just four times; and one of those was in a season-ending consolation game. The team left St. Louis in 1987 when owner Bill Bidwill was unable to convince the city to build a new stadium.
In 1988 the Cardinals moved to Arizona, became the Phoenix Cardinals, and started playing home games in Sun Devil Stadium, also home to the Arizona State University football team. They became the Arizona Cardinals in 1994. The team did not post a winning record for 13 seasons (1985 to 1997). Under head coach Vince Tobin, the Cardinals posted a 9-7 record in 1998 and advanced to the playoffs for the first time since the 1982 season. They upset the favored Dallas Cowboys in the wild-card round, 20-7, but lost their divisional playoff to the Minnesota Vikings, 41-21. The Cardinals have not won more than seven games in a season since then, and have had one of the worst yearly attendance records in the NFL.
The team started construction on a new facility in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale. Cardinals Stadium will feature a retractable roof and a slide-out grass surface, and is scheduled to open for the 2006 season [1]. It will also be the location of Super Bowl XLII (2008).