December 12, 1925, 100 years ago: The most controversial championship in the National Football League's history is awarded.
The Chicago Cardinals traced their founding to that of the Morgan Athletic Club, on the South Side of Chicago, in 1898. In 1920, they became charter members of the league that became the NFL. By 1925, head coach Norman Barry could call on some great talent: Backs John "Paddy" Driscoll (also one of the best placekickers of the era), Joseph "Red" Dunn, Bobby Koehler and Hal Erickson.
Paddy Driscoll, from his later tenure
with the Chicago Bears
They lost their opening game to the Hammond Pros, then rattled off 8 straight wins before a scoreless tie with the Chicago Bears, in the 1st NFL game played by Harold "Red" Grange. The Cardinals bounced back just 3 days later, beating the Rock Island Independents. But the following week, they lost 21-7 to the Pottsville Maroons.
Pottsville is about 100 miles northwest of Philadelphia, and around 50 miles northeast of Harrisburg. The Maroons were founded in 1920, and joined the NFL in 1925. At the time, their best player was end Charlie Berry, who also played 13 seasons in Major League Baseball, mostly as a catcher with the "nearby" Philadelphia Athletics.
They opened that season with a win over the Buffalo Bisons, lost 6-0 to the Providence Steam Roller, won 4 straight including a reversal of Providence, lost 20-0 to the Philadelphia-based Frankford Yellow Jackets, and then won 4 straight including a reversal of Frankford, before going to Comiskey Park and beating the Cardinals.
At that point, the Maroons were 10-2, the Cardinals 9-2-1. It was presumed that the NFL season was over, and that the Maroons' win over the Cardinals had clinched the Championship.
But scheduling was not fixed before the season -- one of the reasons why the early NFL was not exactly a "major league" operation. Teams could arrange additional games between them, and get them approved by the NFL office. Cardinals back Art Folz arranged a game with Ambrose McGuirk, owner the Milwaukee Badgers, who had finished 0-5, including an earlier 34-0 loss to the Cardinals. NFL President Joseph Carr approved the game for December 10, and the Cardinals won it, 58-0, lifting them to 10-2-1.
Then it got out that high school players had played for the Badgers under assumed names. McGuirk was ordered to sell the franchise, and it only lasted 1 more season. Folz was banned from the NFL for life. This ban was lifted after 1 year, but he chose not to return. Cardinals owner Chris O'Brien was fined $1,000. However, the game was allowed to remain in the official record. That was the wrong thing to do, but it was done.
Carr ordered both the Cardinals and the Maroons to play 1 more game. Just 2 days later, on December 12, the Cardinals played the only other team that had beaten them, the Hammond Pros -- Hammond is an industrial city in Indiana, just over the State Line from Chicago -- and beat them, 13-0 at Comiskey Park. Cardinals, 11-2-1.
On the same day, the Maroons played the Notre Dame All-Stars, a team of Notre Dame alumni (but not including any of the 1924 season's "Four Horsemen") at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. It was a sellout, and it made the Maroons, by the standards of the time, a lot of money. And they won, 9-7. Maroons, 11-2.
But Carr ruled that, since the All-Stars were not an NFL team, the game couldn't be counted in the NFL standings. Nor could their hastily-arranged game a week later, against the Atlantic City Roses at Bader Field, a field adjacent to the airport of the same name in Atlantic City. The Maroons won, 6-0, but it didn't count. So the final standings were:
1. Chicago Cardinals, 11-2-1
2. Pottsville Maroons, 10-2
3. Detroit Panthers, 8-2-2
4. New York Giants, 8-4 (Their 1st season in the league.)
Two other teams then in existence still are: The Bears finished 9-5-3, surprisingly only 3-3-1 after signing Grange; and the Green Bay Packers finished 8-5.
O'Brien never claimed the 1925 NFL Championship for the Cardinals. But in 1933, desperate for cash in the Great Depression, he sold the team to Charles Bidwill, who did claim it.
For decades thereafter, the City of Pottsville sent representatives to NFL meetings to plead their case for being awarded the 1925 NFL Championship. They usually got the owners of the later Pennsylvania teams on their side: Art Rooney, and later his son Dan, owners of the Pittsburgh Steelers; and the owners of the Philadelphia Eagles. As recently as 2003, an appeal was made to NFL officials, and rejected.
Did the Cardinals win the title fairly? Yes: Like the Chicago Bears over the Buffalo All-Americans in "the Staley Swindle" of 1921, they didn't break the rules, they used the rules, as they stood at the time. The Maroons tried to use the rules, but it didn't work. Bob Carroll, a football historian, has summed it up properly: "The Cardinals didn't defy the league. Pottsville did. It was a great team, but the owner made a mistake."
The City of Pottsville, a coal-mining community, had a piece of anthracite coal carved into the shape of a football, turning it into a trophy, and labeled it, "POTTSVILLE MAROONS N.F.L. AND WORLD CHAMPIONS 1925." The Maroons folded after the 1929 season, victims of the Depression, and the trophy rested in City Hall until 1964. At that time, surviving members of the '25 Maroons donated it to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, where it remains on display.
The Cardinals never got close to the title again until 1947, when owner Charles Bidwill died. With his widow, Violet, becoming the NFL's 1st female owner, they faced the Eagles in back-to-back NFL Championships Games, winning in 1947 and losing in 1948.
In 1949, Violet married Walter Wolfner, a St. Louis-based businessman. In 1960, recognizing that they couldn't compete in Chicago with the Bears, they moved the Cardinals to St. Louis, even though there was already a baseball team named the St. Louis Cardinals.
Violet died in 1962, and her sons, Charles Jr. and Bill, cut their stepfather out of the operation of the team, resulting in Walter filing a lawsuit that turned nasty: He tried to have his adoption of them invalidated, which would turn control of Violet's team over to her husband, him. Except the court ruled that it didn't work that way: They were still her sons, and she left the team to them.
In 1972, Bill Bidwill bought his brother out. In 1974, 1975 and 1982, the Cardinals made the Playoffs, but didn't go far. In 1988, Bill moved them to the Phoenix area, renaming them the Phoenix Cardinals, and then the Arizona Cardinals in 1993. In 1998, they won a Playoff game for the 1st time in 51 years. In the 2008 season, they reached Super Bowl XLIII, but lost it to the Steelers. Bill died in 2019, and passed the team to his son Michael Bidwill. He still claims the 1925 NFL Championship for his team, 100 years after it was awarded, and 65 years after the team left the city where it was won.
Times change: As the Maroons, and the Chicago version of the Cardinals, faded from memory, and the Super Bowl took precedence, the fact that the Cardinals' titles came before the advent of the Super Bowl means that they get discounted: Even before the distance of time became what it is now, NFL fans have come to regard any title won before the Super Bowl -- in the NFL from 1920 to 1969, the AFL from 1960 to 1969, or the AAFC from 1946 to 1949 -- as not a "real" championship.
The Cardinals could have been named the Maroons. When the Morgan Athletic Club started its football team, they ordered used uniforms from the nearby University of Chicago, whose teams were named the Maroons. But when the uniforms arrived, they'd faded, and someone said the shade wasn't maroon, it was cardinal red. So the Cardinals they have been ever since.
Also on December 12, 1925, Theodore Samuel Kennedy was born in Port Colborne, Ontario, Canada. Despite having the same first and middle name as Ted Williams, he was not elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. "Teeder" was, however, elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame, as a star for, and eventually Captain of, the Toronto Maple Leafs. And this Ted Kennedy's name really was Theodore, unlike Senator Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy.
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