arizona cardinals history
arizona cardinals history
Arizona Cardinal tickets are going to be hard to come by this year. When was the last time anyone said that? It was probably back in 1999, the year after Jake Plummer led the Cardinals into the playoffs, doing his best Joe Montana impression along the way. Yes, it has certainly been a while, but the Cardinals are back. Dennis Green has his troops prepped to make a big splash in 2005; and this year he has some weapons to make the most of his high-powered passing game. Weapons like former league MVP Kurt Warner, and a stable of wideouts that compare favorably to almost any other receiving corps in the NFL. Arizona ticket holders will have the pleasure of watching Warner air it out to the likes of 2003 Rookie of the Year Anquan Boldin, or super sophomore Larry Fitzgerald. Opposing defenses will not find it near as fun, but Arizona fans with Cardinals football tickets will.
Most people know that the Cardinals did not originate in Arizona, but few know that the franchise originated in Chicago in 1898. The team adopted the name Cardinals when the maroon jerseys they had been wearing all season faded to a light red. By 1920, the Cardinals were members of the American Professional Football League, which eventually evolved into the NFL. They won their first NFL championship in 1925. This turned out to be a very lonely trophy, as the Cardinals never got close to a championship for the next 20 years. As other teams excelled and the war effort decimated Cardinal rosters, the team wallowed in mediocrity.
This all ended when the Cardinals hired coach Jimmy Conzelman in 1946. Conzelman revamped the offense, assembling a backfield that overwhelmed opponents. The 1947 Cardinals charged through the season and easily defeated the Philadelphia Eagles for their second championship.
In 1960, the franchise moved from Chicago to St. Louis. Cardinal ticket sales soared, and the move energized the team, which was consistently above average in the 60’s.
A return to the playoffs was not in the “Cards” until 1974, when quarterback Jim Hart and running back Terry Metcalf led the team to a resurgence that helped them share the NFL Player of the Year Award. St. Louis ticket holders got another ride to the playoffs in the following year, but the team failed to advance again.
The Cardinals muttled through the next 20 years, despite fielding some of the finest players of that era. Players like offensive linemen Dan Dierdorf and Conrad Dobler, running back Ottis Anderson, and quarterback Neil Lomax became household names to fans with Cardinals football tickets.
The one remarkable change in that stretch of time was the franchise’s relocation to Phoenix, Arizona in 1988. Dubbed the Arizona Cardinals, there was little change on the field until 1998, when Jake Plummer led the upstart Cardinals into the playoffs, rewarding Cardinal ticket holders with the franchise’s their first playoff win in 50 years.
The Arizona Cardinals now seem primed and ready to write some new pages in their long storied history. They find themselves in an NFC West that has no clear-cut favorite, and many prognosticators are seeing them as the team to beat in that division. This hinges primarily on the defense, which made many moves in the off-season and was able to take advantage of the salary cap woes of other teams. As the year moves along, and the wins begin to rack up, Arizona Cardinal tickets may actually become as scarce as rain is in those parts.
