Revenge of the Birds
The owner of the Arizona Cardinals is Michael J. Bidwill. He is a wealthy man. The Bidwill family overall is rich, rich.
The Bidwill’s have owned the Cardinals franchise since 1932, but the sale wasn’t announced until 1933. A member of the Bidwell family has owned the franchise ever since.
How did this family become so wealthy? The facts are, when Charles Bidwell purchased the Chicago Cardinals in 1932, he was already rich.
The Cardinals have won two NFL championships, with one being under the Bidwills’ ownership in 1947. The other was the 1925 title that remained under controversy for decades. That is another story. There are numerous teams in the league that have long-time family ties, and the Cardinals are one of them.
How did the Bidwill family end up with the Cardinals? The yarn involves a man who loved the Chicago Bears.
Here’s the entire story.
In 1929, the NFL consisted of 12 clubs. Most were teams with rosters comprised of local athletes and members of athletic clubs or gyms with former college players sprinkled in. Of the dozen squads, only seven called a large city their home: New York Giants, Frankfurt (Philadelphia) Yellow Jackets, Chicago Bears and Chicago Cardinals, Staten Island (New York City) Stapletons, Minneapolis Red Jackets, and Boston Bulldogs.1
The founder of the Cardinals was Chris O’Brien, who began the team in 1898. O’Brien was a painting contractor. He has since been called the “Father of Professional Football in Chicago” and is a founding member of the “National Football League” (NFL), which began as the “American Professional Football Association” in 1920.
Another charter member team, the Decatur Staleys, relocated to Chicago in 1921 and were renamed the Chicago Staleys, then the Chicago Bears in 1922. They played their home games at Cubs Park, home of the Chicago Cubs professional baseball team. Meanwhile, the Cardinals played on a field at Normal Park, which was a city block field located on the corner of Racine Street and West 61st Street.2 The park was large enough for a baseball diamond with a football field overlay in the fall, with seating of just over 3,000.
With the association of the Cubs, the Bears had a large following in the city as the sport of American Football began to take hold, and rabid college football fans embraced the professional variety.
With two pro football teams in the same city, the Cardinals usually were the odd man out because the Bears were extremely successful in the NFL. Since its inception, the Bears had won one NFL championship and orchestrated eight consecutive winning seasons from 1921 to 1928. However, the Cardinals were also successful on the field but not at the gate. They had a difficult time getting citywide support.
In 1922, the Cardinals moved to play their home games in Comiskey Park, built in 1910 as the home of the Chicago White Sox professional baseball club. This stadium seated 28,000. The annual game between the two...
