1925 Chicago Cardinals season
The Cardinals' first NFL title: a 12-2-1 season, a 59-0 game that was never erased, and a championship still argued over.
The 1925 season was the Chicago Cardinals' sixth in the National Football League. Coached by Norman Barry and playing every game in Chicago at Comiskey Park and Normal Park, the team went 12-2-1 overall (11-2-1 in league games), the best winning percentage in the NFL that year, and was proclaimed league champion. The title has been argued over by football historians ever since.
Quick Facts
- Team
- Chicago Cardinals
- Record
- 12–2–1 Overall; 11–2–1 NFL
- League place
- 1st NFL
- Coach
- Norman Barry
- Stadium
- Comiskey Park; Normal Park
Facts from the source article.
Background
Two late-season episodes made the championship controversial. The Pottsville Maroons beat the Cardinals 21-7 on December 6 and held the best record in the league, but commissioner Joseph Carr suspended Pottsville and removed it from the NFL for playing an unauthorized exhibition game in Philadelphia, the territory of the Frankford Yellow Jackets. The Cardinals then played two hastily scheduled games against weak opponents, including a 59-0 win over a new Milwaukee Badgers club.
Cardinals player Art Folz had hired four Chicago high school players to suit up for Milwaukee under assumed names to guarantee the result; the game was supposed to be struck from the records but never was. Pottsville supporters argue that the league did not grant exclusive territorial rights at the time and that the suspension was illegitimate. The Maroons' trophy, carved from anthracite coal in 1925, was donated by surviving team members to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1964.
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