page_title: History of the Chicago Cardinals
section_title: 1920s
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Chicago Cardinals / 1920s
caption_attribution_description: English: The Chicago Cardinals football team.
context_page_description: The professional American football team now known as the Arizona Cardinals previously played in Chicago, Illinois, as the Chicago Cardinals from 1920 to 1959 before relocating to St. Louis, Missouri, for the 1960 season.
  Roots can be traced to 1898, when Chris O'Brien established an amateur Chicago-based athletic team, the "Morgan Athletic Club". O'Brien later moved them to Chicago's Normal Park and renamed them the "Racine Normals", then adopting the maroon color from the University of Chicago uniforms.
  In the 1920s the Cardinals became part of a professional circuit in Chicago. The Cardinals, along with the Chicago Bears, were founding members of the National Football League in 1922. Both teams are the only two surviving teams from that era. The Bears and the Cardinals also developed a rivalry during those NFL first years.
  After some irregular campaigns during the 1950s, the Cardinals were largely overshadowed by the Bears in Chicago and almost fell into bankruptcy. After some efforts to buy the Cardinals, a group of investors including Lamar Hunt, Bud Adams, Bob Howsam and Max Winter, joined forces to form the American Football League to compete with National Football League.
context_section_description: At the time of the founding of the modern National Football League, the Cardinals were part of a thriving professional football circuit based in the Chicago area. Teams such as the Decatur Staleys, Hammond Pros, Chicago Tigers and the Cardinals had formed an informal loop similar to, and generally on par with, the Ohio and New York circuits that had also emerged as top football centers prior to the league's founding.
  In 1920, the team became a charter member of the American Professional Football Association (later renamed the National Football League (NFL) in 1922), for a franchise fee of $100. The Cardinals and the Chicago Bears (the latter founded as the Decatur Staleys before moving to Chicago in 1921 and being renamed the Chicago Staleys, then in 1922 being renamed the Chicago Bears) are the only charter members of the NFL still in existence, though the Green Bay Packers, which 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 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 touchdown on a fumble recovery, with the Staleys failing their extra point try.
  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 scoreless 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, when the Staleys 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 Staleys, now renamed the Bears, went 9–3–0, 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.
  In 1923 and 1924, the Bears got the better of the Cardinals all three times the two teams played.  But in 1925, the Bears went 0–1–1 against the Cardinals with the tie meaning the Cardinals were only a ½ game in front of the Pottsville Maroons heading into their fateful 1925 showdown.
  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 had it not been for the Cardinals' tenacity against the Bears, the Bears very well might have won two more. The Bears were a dominant team against everyone but the Cardinals in the league's early years. From 1920 to 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 for the Cardinals. The Cardinals battled the Bears to 4–4–2 split between 1920 and 1925 and established the NFL's first rivalry.
  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 
caption: The 1921 Chicago Cardinals
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