Arizona
Cardinals
The Arizona Cardinals
are a National
Football League team based in Tempe,
Arizona.
- Founded: 1898
- Formerly known as: Chicago Cardinals, 1920-1959;
St. Louis football Cardinals, 1960-1987;
Phoenix Cardinals, 1988-1993.
- Home stadium: Sun
Devil Stadium Tempe,
Arizona
- Uniform colors: Cardinal red and White
- Helmet
design: white helmet, the silhouette of a cardinal's head
- League
championships won: NFL 1925,
1947
- Super
Bowl appearances: none
Franchise
history
The Cardinals are the oldest existing football club in the United
States, beginning as an amateur athletic club team in Chicago. They began to field
a pro team even before the founding of the NFL. Located on Racine Avenue in Chicago,
they were known for a while as the "Racine Cardinals". Under this name, they suffered
at the gate because Chicagoans, naturally, took them for a team from Racine,
Wisconsin. As the "Chicago Racine Cardinals" and then as the "Chicago Cardinals",
they entered the NFL and fought with the crosstown rival Chicago
Bears for years before moving to St.
Louis. In 1942, owing to
player shortages caused by World
War II, the Cardinals and Pittsburgh
Steelers merged for one year and were known as the "Car-Pitts", or "Carpets".
The Cardinals won their only NFL championship game in 1947 with their "dream backfield"
which included quarterback Paul Christman and halfback Charlie Trippi.
Between
1960 and 1987,
St.
Louis was home to the Cardinals, a period when two big-league teams of that
name existed in the city. Sports fans and local news coverage got into the habit
of calling them "the football Cardinals" or "the baseball
Cardinals" to distinguish the two. They left St. Louis when owner Bill Bidwill
was unable to extort
the city into building a new stadium.
The team has started construction on
a new stadium in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale.
This stadium, which will feature a retractable roof and a slide-out grass surface,
is scheduled to open for the 2006 season.
Players
of note
Pro Football Hall of Famers:
- Dan Dierdorf
- Charlie Trippi
- Larry Wilson
Current stars:
Not to be forgotten: - Jim Bakken
- Boomer Esiason
- Jim Hart
- Garrison Hearst
- Jackie
Smith
- Aeneas Williams
