December 12, 1925: The most controversial championship in the National Football League's 102-season 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. 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 a 34-0 loss to the Cardinals. NFL President Joseph Carr approved the game for December 10, and the Cardinals won it, 58-0, living 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. 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. 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. 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, 96 years after it was awarded, and 61 years after the team left the city where it was won.
One final note: The Cardinals could have been named the Maroons. When they got started, 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.
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December 12, 1925 was a Sunday. In addition to the Cardinals' win over Hammond and the Maroons' win over the Notre Dame All-Stars, 2 other games were played by NFL teams that day:
* The Chicago Bears lost to the Detroit Panthers, 21-0 at Navin Field in Detroit. This was the home of the Detroit Tigers, renamed Briggs Stadium in 1938 and Tiger Stadium in 1961. Red Grange had been injured against the Giants the week before, and did not play in this game.
* And the Cleveland Bulldogs beat the Frankford Yellow Jackets, 3-0 at Frankford Stadium in Northeast Philadelphia.
And there were 2 games played in the NHL that day:
* The Toronto St. Patricks beat the Montreal Canadiens, 4-0 at the Mutual Street Arena in Toronto. In 1927, the St. Patricks were renamed the Maple Leafs, and their color changed from green to blue.
* And the Montreal Maroons beat the Ottawa Senators, 5-2 at the Montreal Forum. By 1938, both of these teams would be defunct.