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Cardinals are cursed, literally - They can’t win

January 30, 2009

Super Bowl XLIII will be played between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals , but the the problem is that they are cursed, literally cursed. Below is an except from my ESPN friend, David Fleming (one of our past employees donated his time and worked on the Breaker Boys website). The below is taken from ESPN. For the fact that our office overlooks the area where the Pottsville Maroons stadium was located (if the stadium was still there, I would have a clear view of the field) we have a vested intrest in seeing the curse held until the Maroons receive their 1925 NFL “Super Bowl” championship

CARDINAL CURSE

Ever look at the Arizona Cardinals and think: “In an era where the NFL practically legislates parity, how is it that the Cardinals have won only one playoff game in the last 59 years and have had double-digit losing seasons in 15 of the last 18 years? Are they cursed?”

Actually, yeah.

In what was widely regarded as the 1925 NFL championship game the league’s two best teams met at Comiskey Park where, during an ice storm, Pottsville beat the Chicago Cardinals 21-7. At the time college football was still king and the greatest football team ever assembled was the Notre Dame Four Horsemen. An exhibition game was set up in Philadelphia against the fledgling NFL’s best team (Pottsville) and Notre Dame, the undefeated national champs from 1924. Experts at the time said the pro football players who could beat Notre Dame hadn’t even been born yet. Yet with darkness descending on Shibe Park (later, Connie Mack Stadium) a stunned crowd fell silent as Maroons captain Charlie Berry (who later became the dean of American League umpires) kicked a 30-yard field goal to upset the Four Horsemen, 9-7. The game helped legitimize the NFL but it also destroyed the town and the team that made it all possible. A week later, the Frankford Yellow Jackets (the team that later became the Eagles) protested that the Maroons had played the Notre Dame game in their “territory.” The NFL suspended the Maroons, making them ineligible for the championship. At the 1925 owners meeting in Detroit, the league tried to award the title to the Chicago Cardinals owner Chris O’Brien, but he refused to accept what he called a “bogus” title that his team did not win on the field. As a result the 1925 NFL championship was never formally awarded.

At the time the Cardinals had bigger issues. After losing to the Maroons on the field, the Cardinals tried to cram in enough games to surpass Pottsville in the final standings. When it became clear that one of those opponents, the Milwaukee Badgers, could not field a full team, a player from the Cardinals coerced four high school players from Chicago to play for the Badgers. The game was an embarrassing farce and when word leaked out about the Cardinals playing against teenagers, an enraged NFL commissioner threatened O’Brien with a lifetime ban and ordered the result stricken from the record.

Despite all that, when the Bidwill family bought the Cardinals franchise in 1932 they still began to claim the 1925 championship as their very own. And when the Pottsville Maroons petitioned the league in 1963, Charles “Stormy” Bidwill Jr. wrote to sportswriter Red Smith poking fun of little Pottsville and saying his family had no intention of giving away their title. This is when most believe that Joe Zacko, a huge Maroons booster who owned the Pottsville landmark Zacko’s Sporting Goods, placed his curse on the Cardinals. Since then the Cards have won exactly one playoff game.

In 2003 there was a chance to make everything right when Steelers owner Dan Rooney, Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie, Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell and Pottsville mayor John Reiley came up with a solution that had then commissioner Paul Tagliabue’s blessing: let the Cards and the Maroons share the title. Tagliabue had even begun to make plans to come to Pottsville to give the town its title back. Instead, Rooney and Reiley say that current Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill used his influence behind the scenes to squash the Maroons petition. The owners never even discussed the case, they voted 30-2 against even talking about it or hearing the Maroons case. Bidwill has since refused numerous interview requests on the topic.

“What’s been done to this town and this team — it’s not right,” says Rooney. “It needs to be fixed.”

Since then word of the Cardinals Curse has spread in Arizona. And after last year’s 5-11 finish fans began contacting members of the Maroons Memorial Committee to ask them to lift the curse.

The request was denied.

But with the Cards still struggling to get above .500 you already knew that.
-David Fleming

maroons

Written by TheFounder · Filed Under Advertising Agency News 


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