Chicago’s First Pro Football Club: The Chicago Cardinals When people think of professional football in the “City of Big Shoulders” Chicago, they think of the Chicago Bears. Little do a lot of football fans know that before the Bears existed in Chicago, there was the original professional football team of Chicago, the Chicago Cardinals. The Bears arrived in Chicago in the year 1921 from Decatur, Illinois. The Chicago Cardinals began their pro football journey in 1920. From 1920 to 1959 the Chicago Cardinals played NFL football in Chicago and contributed a football legacy, until their departure for St. Louis for the 1960 season. To start, the cradle of pro football is Ohio, Wisconsin, New York, Philadelphia, Illinois, and other Midwest and East states. Before the National Football League (NFL) was born, the professional league was called the American Professional Football Association (APFA). In 1920 the APFA began play with eleven …show more content…
The season of 1959 ended for the Chicago Cardinals with their record at 2-10. The team had been considering a new location for some time and even played home games that year in Minnesota (Fleming). The owner, Violet Bidwell, made a decision after the 1959 season to locate to St. Louis, thus ending the Cardinals’ football history in Chicago. The Chicago Cardinals became the St. Louis Cardinals in 1960. Then in 1988 the St. Louis Cardinals moved to Arizona and would become the Phoenix Cardinals. Eventually the Phoenix Cardinals renamed themselves the Arizona Cardinals in 1994 and still go by that name (Fleming). The Bidwell family still owns “the longest continuously run NFL franchise” (“Arizona