The Day Pro Football Died on the South Side

Unable to escape the Bears' long shadow or compete on the field, the Chicago Cardinals abandoned the city in 1960.

By Clete Campbell

Windy City End Zone

The bank statement read zero.

Charles and Violet Bidwell checked their math against the bank’s. There was no use arguing. The case was as futile as a defense’s best laid game plan for stopping Jim Brown.

The truth was as simple as the scoreboard.

It was now 1959, and the Chicago Cardinals were broke.

The two-time NFL champions and pioneering team of Duke Slater (one of the game’s first African-American stars) had become a league doormat, a joke and easy win to their rivals, a host to just a few hundred fans per game at Comiskey Park, and worst of all: all but irrelevant in their own city, where they played in the unescapable suffocating shadow of the Bears, who they hadn’t beat in forever.

As the Encyclopedia of Chicago noted, the Cardinals were “one of the least successful franchises in professional football history.”

NFL football on the South Side was on the ropes and one Floyd Patterson haymaker away from being down for the count.

“They weren't good and attendance stunk,” Chicago sports journalist Tony Twillie wrote. “They became the FAR second fiddle to the Bears and as such they looked to leave town.”

The Cardinals, Bidwell decided, needed new air to breathe. And he felt the breeze blowing south. Southward to St. Louis.

Even Bears fans were saying, “Say it ain’t so, Chuck.”

Sixty years earlier on the eve of the 20th century, Chris O’Brien had formed a neighborhood team which played under the un-imposing moniker the Morgan Athletic Club. The franchise upgraded in names to the Normals, the Racine (named for the iconic Chicago street) before becoming the Cardinals.

“That’s not maroon; it’s cardinal red,” O’Brien would say on the team’s faded maroon jerseys from the University of Chicago, which inspired its ultimate lasting nickname.

It would become the first and longest continuous operating team in pro football.

But now, the once-proud 1947 NFL champs were in flight mode, looking to leave their native city for more prosperous pastures.

Rumors of the Cardinals’ pending Southbound flight to the city of birds ran nearly as wild as Nellie Fox and the 1959 White Sox did on the American League during their pennant and World Series runs. Bidwell tried to buy himself some time, better on-field fortunes and capital by trading star running back Ollie Matson to the Los Angeles Rams for eight players and a draft pick.

Unfortunately, the Cardinals’ competitive and financial fortunes only worsened without Matson. The team went 2-10 in 1959, capping a sorry decade in which they won only 33 games (an average of 3 per season).

“Good seats, lousy team. Good place to see stars from other teams,” one fan said of the Cardinals’ 1950s home game misfortunes at Comiskey.

The Bidwells were now in desperate sell mode. They entertained offers from any out-of-town investor with a check that wouldn’t bounce: Lamar Hunt, Bud Adams, Bob Howsam and Max Winter.

None would hook the Bidwell’s bait as all they were offering was a minority stake in the team. Charles would still be in charge of a team he’d been running as well as Captain Edward John Smith had steered the Titanic.

Meanwhile, undeterred in their failed effort to buy the Cardinals and get in the NFL game, Hunt, Adams, Howsam and Winter went rogue and joined forced to create the forever-influential American Football League.

But in St. Louis, Bidwell saw a more profitable and winning future for his franchise. And now faced with a formidable rival for the first time, the NFL quickly came to the Bidwells’ financial aid.

“He had a better deal in St. Louis (being the) only team in town,” longtime Cardinals fan Steven Singer would remember.

Yes, but Bidwell’s Cardinals weren’t even the only Redbird team in town. They shared the same name, stadium and city as St. Louis’ true sports love, the class of the National League. But for the NFL, all that mattered is the Bidwells had blocked the AFL from moving into a new market.

And at the dawn of the 1960, the Bears were now the only pro football game in Chicago.

“Football is the heartbeat of Chicago, and we’re its pulse,” Bears owner George Halas would say later. “You just don’t play for the team; you play for Chicago.”

Since leaving Chicago, the Cardinals have changed cities and states yet again and names three times. They now reside in Glendale, Ariz., where they see few actual Cardinals outside their glossy retractable roof stadium (University of Phoenix Stadium).

A Chicago sports curse may be in play. Sixty-five years later, the franchise has yet to win a Super Bowl and is the losingest franchise in NFL history entering the 2025 season.

The Cardinals have learned the long, hard way: the grass (or Astroturf) isn’t always greener in St. Louis.