There is a tiny little coal town in the mountains northeast of Philadelphia called Pottsville. It has a population of less than 14,000 people. It is best known as the origin of the beer Yeungling. In 1925, it also had one other claim to fame: the best football team in the NFL.
The Pottsville Maroons were founded in 1920, made up of mostly town guys who knew how to rip and tear, and they were local favorites who played on a high school field. In 1924, they were the champions of the short-lived Anthracite league, a tiny league of PA coal town teams, and they were even good enough to recruit some actual NFL dudes onto the team. When the Anthracite league would fold a year later, they applied to the NFL. They were accepted.
This tiny little nothing town in the mountains of PA entered the NFL in 1925 and immediately became the best team in football. This was an era of football that looked…very different to our modern eyes. There were no conferences, no divisions, no set schedules. Just a coalition of teams that would schedule games against each other when they could and then award a title to the team with the best record at the end. Teams could even schedule matchups against non-league opponents, so they could make extra money. This becomes key to our story.
On December 6th, the Maroons would defeat the Chicago Cardinals 21-7 and obtain a 10-2 record, all but assuring them the title over their closest competitor. This is where things get stupid.
The Frankford Yellow Jackets (Based in Philly) had organized an exhibition match against Notre Dame, for funsies, for Dec 12th. It was intended to be a game between the best eastern NFL team and the Notre Dame “all-stars”. Frankford assumed they’d be the best, but with a worse winning percentage than the Maroons, they lost the chance to play in the game they organized.
Pottsville thought that their tiny little mountain town high school football field was not grand enough to host Notre Fucking Dame, so they switched the field to Philly on the same day as a Frankford game. This was in violation of Frankford’s “territory”, and they were warned, but went ahead with the game after supposedly receiving permission from the league office. The result was a suspension, preventing them from playing one final scheduled game, giving Chicago an opportunity to schedule two more games in their stead.
The thing is, those two games Chicago would win to claim the best record would not be clean wins. They played against the already dispersed Hammond Pros and Milwaukee Badgers, a team that could not fill out their roster; A Cardinals player literally paid high schoolers to plug the holes. This would ensure the Badgers would get steamrolled because high school boys don’t stand a chance against actual men. This was also against league rules. While the Maroons would get suspended for their transgression of playing a non-league game near another team, Chicago would merely get fined, for actually cheating. The wins would count, because the league didn’t find out before the game.
Chicago’s two quick cheap wins gave them the best league record and the title. Pottsville would protest to no avail, and the few times the league has re-opened the case, the league has voted to stick with the result. The Maroons would never be this good again, and after moving to Boston in 1929, they folded a year later. They remain a little footnote to NFL history nerds and the local Pottsville community.
Their true legacy, however, might be cursing the Cardinals. Believe it or not, the Cardinals owner did not accept the title in 1925, as he felt they could not claim it when they were rightfully beaten by Pottsville. The title would only be claimed when Charles Bidwell bought the team in 1933, beginning a historic legacy of shitty ownership.
The Cardinals are the oldest team in the NFL, having been born as the Morgan Athletic Club in 1898. They started in Chicago, moved to St Louis, and then to their current home in Arizona. When we think of sad-sack NFL teams, the Cardinals are rarely the first to come to mind. We think Browns, or Jets, or Lions. The Cardinals get forgotten. Such is their lot in life, existing out in the desert where old people move to die if they don’t want to go to Florida instead.
And yet…with over 128 years in existence, there is a very strong argument that the Cardinals are the most pathetic franchise in football. Maybe in all of sports.
In 128 years, the Cardinals have achieved a grand total of 2 championships. This one, fraught with controversy, and in 1945, where they ended up the winner in a league with just 10 teams, beating the Philadelphia Eagles for the title. With a history so long, 2 titles (one being questionable), is pathetic. The Browns didn’t exist till 1944 and have 4 AFL championships to their name, and 4 more AAFC titles. The Lions, who have existed since 1930, have 4 league titles. Even the Jets have one pre-merger title and one of the most historically significant Super Bowls to their name, and they’ve only existed since 1959. Most of the teams without a championship were born in the Super Bowl era, or at least well after the Cardinals’ 1947 win, such as the Bengals or Vikings.
The Cardinals have the second-worst win percentage in football, barely ahead of only the Buccaneers, a team that has played roughly half the amount of games the Cardinals have. The Cards easily own the most losses of any team (826). They would have to win 230 straight games to reach .500. If we generously make every season from now an 18-game season, they would have to go undefeated for over 12 years. TO BREAK EVEN. (I don’t know if playoff wins count towards the total, so potentially less, but not much less).
The Bidwells have owned the franchise since ‘33 and have quietly been one of the worst owners in a league already full of evil dipshits. The Cardinals were routinely ranked down at the bottom of the union grades. The Cardinals failures as a franchise seem to get away with it by hiding behind worse franchises. They are a quiet kind of pathetic instead of in your face about it, Cleveland-style. The Cardinals have had 43 head coaches, and none of them (not one), has lasted more than 5 seasons. They almost killed Bruce Arians, who briefly retired to get the fuck outta there after 5 years so he could take a health break and then go win a Super Bowl…as a Buccaneer.
Those of us of Millennial+ age have sadly seen maybe the best Cardinals have ever offered: the Larry Fitzgerald era. The Cards came within a toe-tap of winning the only Super Bowl they’ve managed to reach. I used to be really sad about that because I loved Larry and Kurt so much. Reading up on the history of this garbage franchise, I can’t help but feel like it’s fitting that they failed. Failing is what this franchise does. This franchise is not interesting. This franchise is not dramatic. This franchise is a lemon, a shitty car, poorly designed, that has never worked correctly.
Maybe the only way to free the Cardinals from hell is to give Pottsville the Championship they deserve. Justice for the Pottsville Maroons.
Most of this was researched through Breaker Boys, the excellent book on the matter from David Flemming. As well as some wikipedia rabbit holes.
