The Arizona Cardinals are a professional American Football team based in Glendale, Arizona. The Cardinals are members of the Western Division of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL). The Cardinals were founded in 1898, and are the oldest continuously run professional American football club in the United States.

The team was established in Chicago in 1898 and was a charter member of the NFL in 1920. The club moved to St. Louis, Missouri in 1960 and played in that city through 1987. Before the 1988 NFL season, the team moved to Tempe, Arizona, an eastern suburb of Phoenix, and played their home games for the next 18 years at Arizona State University's Sun Devil Stadium. In 2006 the club began playing all home games at the newly constructed University of Phoenix Stadium in the northwestern suburb of Glendale.

The franchise's lone NFL championship game victory came in 1947 while they were based in Chicago, and came two decades before the first Super Bowl game was ever played. The club's other NFL championship occurred in 1925, eight years before the league began holding a championship game, and is a controversial title to this day. The much contested title was believed to belong to the Pottsville Maroons but was given to the Cardinals instead in what is called the 1925 NFL Championship controversy. In the six-plus decades since winning the championship in 1947, the Cardinals have qualified for the playoffs only six times and have won only five playoff games, three of which were achieved during their run in the 2008-09 NFL Playoffs in which they reached Super Bowl XLIII.

Franchise History

The Cardinals are the oldest professional American football club in the United States. The team now known as the Arizona Cardinals was originally formed in 1898 as the Morgan Athletic Club in Chicago. The club's name changed to the Racine Normals, because they were originally located in Normal Park on Chicago's Racine Avenue (not Racine, Wisconsin, as mistaken in the notes from an early APFA meeting). Their name was changed to the Racine Cardinals after the club started wearing dark reddish uniforms inherited from the collegiate Chicago Maroons.

After becoming a charter member of the NFL in 1920, the club was renamed the Chicago Cardinals, in part to distinguish them from a new franchise in Racine, Wisconsin. In 1944, during manpower shortages caused by World War II, the Cardinals merged with the Pittsburgh Steelers, called Card-Pitt in the standings, for that single season.

The Cardinals moved to St. Louis, Missouri in 1960, becoming the St. Louis Cardinals. The club was sometimes called "The Football Cardinals" or "Big Red" to distinguish them from the baseball team, and were also called "The Cardiac Cards" during brushes with success in the 1970s.

After an unsuccessful campaign for a new football-only stadium in St. Louis, the club relocated to the Phoenix metropolitan area in 1988, first playing at Sun Devil Stadium on the campus of Arizona State University in the suburb of Tempe. The team was known as the Phoenix Cardinals before it switched to using "Arizona" in its name in 1994.

Despite moving to St. Louis and then to Arizona, for decades the Cardinals remained in either an Eastern conference or division. When the league was divided into Eastern and Western conferences prior to the 1953 season, the Cardinals were placed in the East while the Chicago Bears were placed in the West. After the 1970 AFL-NFL Merger, the team was placed in the NFC East. The Cardinals were finally moved to the NFC West, despite the club's objection, as part of the 2002 realignment.

Despite being the oldest existing professional football franchise in the United States, the Cardinals have a remarkably lean postseason history. They were NFL Champions in 1925 and 1947 and prior to 2008 they had last played for the NFL title in 1948. Following the advent of the Super Bowl, the team had not played in the championship game until the 2008 season, and thus currently holds the NFL record for the longest championship drought. The team has also won only three division titles (1974, 1975, and 2008) since their 1947-1948 NFL championship game appearances. In addition, the club in 2008 became the last NFC team since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger to reach the Conference Championship Game. The team's futility has also been attributed to a sports-related curse placed onto the team because their 1925 title was the result of a disputed, controversial ruling by the NFL.

The Cardinals conduct their annual summer training camp at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.

Source: Wikipedia