The Cardinals began as an amateur athletic club team in Chicago named the Morgan Athletic Club, which was founded by Chicago painter/builder Chris O'Brien in 1898. In 1913, the team turned professional.
O'Brien later moved them to Chicago's Normal Park and renamed them the Racine Normals, since Normal Park was located on Racine Avenue in Chicago. In 1901, O'Brien bought used maroon uniforms from the University of Chicago, the colors of which had by then faded, leading O'Brien to exclaim, "That's not maroon, it's cardinal red!" It was then that the team changed its name to the Racine Cardinals.
The team disbanded in 1906 mostly for lack of local competition, but reformed in 1913. 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 since operated continuously.
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In 1920, the team became a charter member of the American Professional Football Association (which became the NFL in 1922), for a franchise fee of $100USD. The Cardinals and the Bears (originally founded as the Decatur Staleys before moving to Chicago in 1921) are the only charter members of the NFL still in existence, though the Green Bay Packers, who joined the league in 1921, existed prior to the formation of the NFL. The person keeping the minutes of the first league meeting, unfamiliar with the nuances of Chicago football, recorded the Cardinals as from Racine, Wisconsin. The team was renamed the Chicago Cardinals in 1922 after a team actually from Racine, Wisconsin (the Horlick-Racine Legion) entered the league. That season the team moved to Comiskey Park.
The Staleys and Cardinals played each other twice in 1920[1] as the Racine Cardinals and the Decatur Staleys, making their rivalry the oldest in the NFL. They split the series, with the home team winning in each. In the Cardinals 7-6 victory over the Staleys in their first meeting of the season, each team scored a TD on a fumble recovery, with the Staleys failing their extra point try.[2]
The Cardinals' defeat of the Staleys proved critical, since George Halas's Staleys went on to a 10-1-2 record overall, 5-1-2 in league play. The Akron Pros were the first ever league champions, they finished with an 8-0-3 record, 6-0-3 in league play, ending their season in a 0-0 tie against the Staleys. Since the Pros merely had to tie the game in order to win the title, they could afford to play not to lose. Had the Staleys not lost to the Cardinals, they would have gone into that fateful game with an 11-0-1 record, 6-0-1 in league play. As it was, it all but assured that the Staleys/Bears and Cardinals would be intense rivals.
The two teams played to a tie in 1921,[1] when the Staleyes won all but two games, thus the Cardinals came within 1 point of costing the Staleys a second consecutive championship in the league's first two years of existence.
In 1922, the Bears went 9-3-0,[3] losing to the Cardinals twice. The Bears still edged the Cardinals for 2nd place in the league, but those losses dashed all hopes of the Bears repeating as champions.[4]
In 1923 and 1924, the Bears got the better of the Cardinals all three times the two teams played.[5][6] But in 1925, the Bears went 0-1-1 against the Cardinals with the tie meaning the Cardinals were only a 1/2 game in front of the Pottsville Maroons heading into their fateful 1925 showdown.[1]
Thus, in the first 6 years of the NFL's existence, the Bears-Cardinals games had a direct impact on the league championship 4 times. The Bears and Cardinals each took home 1 title during that span. But the Bears nearly cost the Cardinals their title, the Cardinals nearly cost the Bears their title and but for the Cardinals tenacity against the Bears, the Bears very well might have won 2 others. The Bears were a dominant team against everyone but the Cardinals in the leagues early years. From 1920-1925 the Canton Bulldogs, champions in 1922 and 1923, beat the Bears just 2 times and no other team in the NFL defeated the Bears more than once over that entire 6 year span...except the Cardinals. The Cardinals battled the Bears to 4-4-2 split between 1920–1925 and established the NFL first rivalry.[1]
Legend has it that the Cardinals played the Chicago Tigers in 1920, with the loser being forced to leave town. While this has never been proven, the Tigers did disband after one season.
The Cardinals won their first NFL championship in 1925, finishing the season with a record of 11-2-1. In a controversial ruling by the league, the Pottsville Maroons, the team with the best record, had their franchise revoked for violating the territorial rights of the Frankford Yellow Jackets. Thus, the Cardinals won the 1925 title by default. (For more on the controversy, see 1925 NFL Championship controversy.)
The Cardinals posted a winning record only twice in the twenty years after their 1925 championship (1931 and 1935); including 10 straight losing seasons from 1936 to 1945.
Dr. David Jones bought the team from O'Brien in 1929. In 1932 the team was purchased by Charles Bidwill, then a vice president of the Chicago Bears. The team has been under the ownership of the Bidwill family since then.
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-Pitt", or derisively as the "Carpets" as they were winless that season. In 1945, the Cardinals snapped their losing streak by beating the Bears 16-7. It was their only victory of the season. In 1946, the team finished 6-5 for the first winning season in eight years.
In 1947, the NFL standardized on a 12-game season. This would be the most celebrated year in Cardinals history as the team went 9-3, beating Philadelphia in the championship game 28-21 with their "Million-Dollar Backfield", which included quarterback Paul Christman, halfback Charley Trippi, halfback Elmer Angsman, and fullback Pat Harder, piling up 282 rushing yards. However, Bidwill was not around to see it; he'd died before the season, leaving the team to his wife Violet. He had, however, beaten the Chicago Rockets of the upstart All-America Football Conference for the rights to Trippi. This signing is generally acknowledged as the final piece in the championship puzzle. The next season saw the Cardinals finish 11-1 and again play in the championship game, but lost 7-0 in a rematch with the Eagles, played in a heavy snowstorm that almost completely obscured the field. This was the first NFL championship to be televised. The next year, Violet Bidwill married St. Louis businessman Walter Wolfner, and the Cardinals fell to 6-5-1.
The 1950s were a dismal period for the Cardinals, with records of 5-7 (1950), 3-9 (1951), 4-8 (1952), 1-10-1 (1953), 2-10 (1954), 4-7-1 (1955), 7-5 (1956; the best year of the decade), 3-9 (1957), 2-9-1 (1958), and 2-10 (1959). With just 33 wins in ten seasons, the Cardinals were nearly forgotten in Chicago, being completely overshadowed by the Bears. Attendance at games was sparse and the team was almost bankrupt. The Bidwills engineered a deal with the NFL that sent the Cardinals to St. Louis, Missouri beginning with the 1960 season, a move which also blocked St. Louis as a market against the new American Football League.