The Arizona Cardinals kick off their new season on Sunday in western New York against the Buffalo Bills. They’ll host their first game of the season the following week when the division rival LA Rams come to Glendale.
The Cardinals finished last in the NFC West last season with a 4-13 record. But with quarterback Kyler Murray healthy and first-round pick Marvin Harrison, Jr. on the field, there’s more optimism for the team this year.
The Cardinals, of course, are not native to Arizona. For more on the team’s history, The Show spoke with Joe Ziemba, author of books on football history, specifically the Cardinals.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Let’s go back to the beginning. What were the circumstances that led to the Cardinals being founded in Chicago?
JOE ZIEMBA: The Cardinals team goes way back to 1899, when a group of neighborhood kids on the South Side of Chicago started something called the Morgan Athletic Association. So they played without helmets and without pads. And as I mentioned, they were teenagers who just got together because they loved this fairly new sport of football and wanted to get involved with it.
And then the next year, in 1900, they joined forces with a new club called the Morgan Athletic Club, also on the South Side of Chicago. From those early years and a gentleman named Chris O’Brien, who was involved with both of those early teams even though he was a teenager himself, that’s where we can trace the whole history of the Cardinals: back to those early days, over 125 years ago.
BRODIE: Well so, what then led the Cardinals to eventually leave Chicago for St. Louis?
ZIEMBA: Cardinals maintained a base on the south side of Chicago. But in 1920, a new team called the Decatur Staleys started playing games there, and Decatur was from central Illinois. They had recruited a young engineer named George Ellis to play on the football team and serve as the athletic director. And then they got a little bit too big for Decatur.
In 1921, moved to Chicago on the North Side and were called the Chicago Staleys. But it led to a little bit of a conflict in terms of fighting for fans and fighting for victories. And over the years, the Chicago Bears became a little more notorious, a little more successful and certainly more well-attended for their games, where it started, prompting the Cardinals management in the 1950s to perhaps start looking around for a move where they would get better attendance.
Because this is before we had the internet and we had television, etc. and huge sponsorship. So the only way these teams could really make money was two ways: selling programs — which wasn’t very good — and also attendance at games. And the Cardinals grew so poorly in the 1950s, it was difficult for this club to even pay the guarantee to visiting teams from the National Football League.
And so it was sort of with the endorsement of the rest of the league, that the Cardinals were looking around to move somewhere else. And there were several cities mentioned over the years: Buffalo, Miami, San Francisco. But they settled on St. Louis, Missouri, and they moved in March of 1960 hoping for two things: better attendance and a new stadium.
BRODIE: Did the move to St. Louis ultimately prove financially successful for the Cardinals, at least temporarily?
ZIEMBA: Ultimately the move, at first, looked good. The crowds were embracing the Cardinals. They were sharing a stadium, Busch Stadium, with the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team. So the promise was there that the Cardinals were going to have their own stadium in St. Louis eventually. That never panned out.
The team was not very successful, as we mentioned, in the 1950s. They had a few good years in St. Louis, but again, attendance was a problem. And here we’re now seeing where television was becoming more important. And with television becoming more prominent, the Cardinals were looking for other revenue streams to help them out. And the big factor, though, even in St. Louis, was the lack of a stadium for the team.
BRODIE: So that being a problem, they decided to leave St. Louis. They came to Arizona, played in Tempe at Sun Devil Stadium. Was that the main reason for them to leave St. Louis and come here, was in some ways the same reason they left Chicago? Financial reasons and specifically in this case, the stadium?
ZIEMBA: Yes, exactly. Poor attendance, the search for a stadium the team could call its own. For example, the Bears in Chicago were playing in Wrigley Field — which is a baseball field — sharing it with the Cubs. And the Cardinals had been in Comiskey Park on the South Side, sharing it with the Chicago White Sox. And then they shared a stadium with St. Louis.
But as more teams came into the league, the football teams were looking for their own spot. They saw where they can control not only the attendance, but concessions, parking, etc. as the league matured. Television rights were so important, but it looked pretty good on television if you had a strong, full crowd watching your games.
BRODIE: There does seem to be a certain irony in the sense that they left St. Louis because they wanted their own stadium and were tired of sharing it with a baseball team. When they came to Arizona, they shared it — albeit with another football team — but were still sharing a stadium for several years before they got their own.
ZIEMBA: Yes, exactly. And at (Sun Devil Stadium), I remember going to a game there, and I believe I was on the east side of the stadium when the afternoon sun came up.
BRODIE: Little toasty.
ZIEMBA: Being from Chicago, that was a little toasty for me. But yeah, I think the fact that they were able now to build a stadium but not share it with anyone — unless they wanted to, and of course there’s a lot of events there — but that roof and the air conditioning really makes it spectacular for the fan.
And even going back — now this is where I’m going to stretch my memory — to 1917, 1918. The Cardinals played in a place called Dexter Pavilion for indoor games in Chicago during the winter. Again, a way to make money. But even then, it almost seemed like the team was destined to have an indoor stadium in their future. It just took a hundred years. That’s all.
BRODIE: So obviously the game of football does not look anything in 2024 like it did in the early part of the 20th century, but I wonder if when you watch the Cardinals of today, do you see any resemblance to any of the teams from back when they were in Chicago or even St. Louis?
ZIEMBA: Yeah, the game is the same in terms of that elusive touchdown. Even that’s changed. When the Cardinals first started, a touchdown was five points, as was a drop-kick field goal worth five points. So the strategy would change.
Of course, the players are bigger and faster. The coaches at one time were not allowed to coach from the sideline. And passing is the main thing. Until the 1930s when the rules were I guess relaxed a little bit, you had to be five yards behind the line of scrimmage to throw a pass, and that made it difficult. And if a pass was thrown into the end zone earlier in the game and dropped, it was the same as a turnover.
So the rules have really helped the National Football League change as it moved away from having the same rules as the colleges in the 1930s. But still, that elusive touchdown is the objective. As I mentioned, the players are bigger, the health concerns are a lot stronger.
I think we can still enjoy the game for what it is: that man-to-man battle on the field. It’s always difficult to explain it to someone who’s not familiar with football, trying to score the touchdown.
BRODIE: All right. That is Joe Ziemba, an author and football historian. Joe, thanks for your time and enjoy the upcoming season.
ZIEMBA: Thank you. Mark, I certainly will. And good luck to everyone in Phoenix area.
