Revenge of the Birds
The Arizona Cardinals are a member club in the National Football League (NFL). They are actually a charter member from the league’s inception of 1920, and only one of two that still exist today. The other is the Chicago Bears, who in 1920 were originally called the “Decatur Staleys.” The Cardinals franchise back then was named the “Chicago Cardinals.”
That maiden season, the NFL had a different moniker. It was called the “American Professional Football Association,” and two years later, it was renamed the NFL.
RELATED: HOW THE BIDWILLS BECAME OWNERS PART 1
The Cardinals have been owned by the Bidwill’s since 1932. However, in the first segment, they had not yet owned the franchise. Here is the second portion of the story of how this family received ownership of the team.
In the summer of 1932, Charles “Blue Shirt Charley” Bidwill and his wife, Violet, hosted an informal dinner party aboard their luxurious yacht “The Ren-Mar” and cruised along Lake Michigan. In attendance was Arch Ward, sports editor of the Chicago Tribune, with his wife Helen, plus Dr. David Jones and his wife Elsa.
The Bidwills were a wealthy family in the Chicagoland area, as Charles had built up a successful law practice.
Dr. Jones owned a lot of stock in the Chicago Cubs pro baseball club and solely owned the Chicago Cardinals NFL club. But for now, it was just a casual evening on a luxury yacht, eating, drinking, and cruising the lake.
The topic eventually got around to pro football, of which Jones was the full owner of the Cardinals, and Bidwill was a minority owner and VP of the crosstown Bears. Ward covered both clubs in the newspaper.
As drinks were flowing throughout the Ren-Mar, Jones began to complain about the unfortunate state of the game in terms of annual financial losses and how much money he was losing. He also mentioned a disdain for having to compete with the Bears, which drew well at the gate, plus annually signed some of the best college talent, and usually had winning teams.
At the time, the NFL college draft was a few years away from coming into existence,8 so blue-chip college players signed with whichever NFL team was offering the most. The better teams always had the best attendance and thus could afford to pay young talent, whereas the bad to mediocre clubs didn’t have the luxury of good gates, and subsequently signed the lower levels of talent.
Like the Cardinals.
Violet Bidwill had seen that although her husband had been involved in so many sporting venues and activities over the decades, but since joining the Bears, he had found a new love in being part of an actual team with day-to-day operations.
At that point aboard the Ren-Mar, Violet Bidwill jokingly asked Jones, “Why don’t you sell the team to Charley?” Jones’ answer was that he would sell anything he owned if the price...
