Arizona Cardinals

In 1988, the Cardinals moved to Arizona, and the Phoenix Cardinals started playing home games in Sun Devil Stadium on the campus of Arizona State University. In March of 1994, in a move designed to better market the franchise to a statewide fan base, team owner Bill Bidwill announced his intention to change the name of the team to the Arizona Cardinals.The rest of the NFL owners quickly approved the name change.

The Cardinals spent most of their first decade in Arizona as a cellar-dweller. Things began to look up during the 1998 season as Jake Plummer enjoyed his greatest stretch of success during his tenure with the franchise, in terms of victories at least, as his quarterback rating was still an average 75.0. The team during that time had once again been dubbed the Cardiac Cards by the local and national media as eight of their 16 regular-season games were decided by three points or less, and seven of those games ended in favor of the Cardinals. Solidifying their status as the team to beat in the clutch, as the Cardinals, with a 6-7 record going into the 15th week, won 3 straight games to clinch a playoff spot, including one that very week which had to be decided in overtime, and the total margin of those 3 victories was a mere 8 points.

This and the fact that none of their victories had been to teams with winning records made them heavy underdogs going into their Wild Card Playoff game against the Dallas Cowboys. Considering their two regular season losses to the Cowboys and the fact that they had been on the losing end of 16 of the last 17 games against their division rivals, including 9 straight losses at Texas Stadium, the "Team of the Nineties" seemed to have history, among other forces, on their side. To further the situation, the Cardinals franchise had not won a single playoff game since their title year of 1947, resulting in the longest active drought in professional sports history.

The Cardinals won the game 20-7; however, the final score made the game appear closer than it actually was, as Arizona dominated the Cowboys on both ends of the football throughout the game. At Texas Stadium that afternoon, the Cardinals jumped out to a 10-0 halftime lead. The Cardinals would later increase that lead to 20-0 in the final minutes of the 4th quarter. The Cowboys' only score was a touchdown late in the 4th quarter, and the Cardinals held on for the upset. The Cardinals, who had suffered for 51 years as the NFL's doormat, finally had a playoff win. However, the distinction was short lived as the Cardinals fell in the divisional round of the playoffs to the Minnesota Vikings who possessed a 15-1 record as well as the highest-scoring offense in NFL history. The Vikings won the game 41-21 in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis.

The Cardinals have not won more than seven games in a season since their 1998 playoff appearance. Coming off of their playoff run in 1998, the Cardinals were expected to do bigger and better things in 1999, but a tough schedule ranked in the top 5 as well as key injuries resulted in what would be another disappointing season, getting off to a 2-6 start. However, the Cards would make another run winning 4 straight to get back into the playoff chase, but it was not meant to be as Arizona lost their last 4 to finish with a disappointing 6-10 record. The team finished with 5-11 records in 2005 and 2006.

In 2000, Maricopa County voters passed a ballot initiative by a margin of 51% to 49%, providing funding for a new Cardinals stadium (as well as for improvements to Major League Baseball spring training facilities in the greater Phoenix region; and youth recreation). After some legal obstacles, the Cardinals began construction of their new facility in April 2003, in Glendale, one of the western suburbs of Phoenix. University of Phoenix Stadium features a retractable roof and a slide-out grass surface, which is good for the hot desert weather; the new stadium has a state-of-the-art air-conditioning system and high-back seats.

The Cardinals are the oldest continuous "professional" American football club in the United States. The team was formed in 1898 as the Morgan Athletic Club in Chicago. The club was then called the Racine Normals since they were originally located in Normal Park on Chicago's Racine Avenue (not Racine, Wisconsin, as mistaken by many). They then changed their name to the Racine Cardinals after they started wearing dark reddish uniforms, inherited from the collegiate Chicago Maroons. This hand-me-down, low-budget situation would prove to be a good metaphor for the team's chronology.

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 that was actually placed in Racine, Wisconsin. In 1944, during the lean years of World War II, the Cardinals temporarily merged into the Pittsburgh Steelers and became one franchise, usually referred to as Card-Pitt, for that one season. The Cardinals moved to St. Louis, Missouri in 1960 becoming the St. Louis Cardinals, often called the "St. Louis Football Cardinals" to distinguish them from the baseball team, and also sometimes called "The Big Red" during some 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 in the suburb of Tempe. The team was known as the Phoenix Cardinals before it started using "Arizona" in its name in 1994.

Despite moving to St. Louis and then to Arizona, the Cardinals for decades 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 their complaints as part of the 2002 realignment.

The Cardinals have historically been known as a chronic loser, better known to historians for survival than for very many notable on-field accomplishments. They were NFL Champions in 1925 and 1947 and last played for the NFL title in 1948. Their good post-war years were actually a remarkable comeback for a team that had been derisively called the "Carpets" during their winless season as "Card-Pitt". However, the team has not won a league title nor played in the championship game since then, and thus currently holds the NFL record for the longest championship drought and along with the Houston Texans (founded in 2002) are the only team not to appear in a conference championship game. The team has also won only two division titles (1974 and 1975) since their 1947 NFL championship. Despite being the oldest existing professional football franchise in the United States, the Cardinals have a remarkably lean postseason history, with an all-time record of 2-5 (not counting the 1964 Bert Bell Benefit Bowl). They did win a Wild Card game against the Dallas Cowboys in 1998. The team's foibles have caused popular sportswriter Will Leitch, a fan of the Cardinals, to refer to the franchise as "The Buzzsaw that is the Arizona Cardinals".

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