The National Football League has a chance to correct an 82-year-old wrong.
I was reading ESPN the Magazine’s pre-Super Bowl issue and was reminded of the screw job that was done to the 1925 Pottsville (Pennsylvania) Maroons.
I had heard many times about the Maroons, the team that dominated the fledgling NFL and beat the Chicago Cardinals 21-7 in basically the first championship. I just never knew the full story.
After winning the title, the Maroons played an all-star team made up of the likes of Notre Dame’s Four Horsemen and won. The NFL gave the go-ahead before that second game was played.
Afterward is when the injustice begins. The Frankford Yellow Jackets, a team they’d clubbed 49-0, pulled “territorial rights” and claimed the all-star game was a violation. According to the story, even though these issues weren’t entirely clear, the NFL backtracked and suspended the Maroons, stripping them of their title. The league tried to give the title to the Cardinals but then-owner Chris O’Brien refused it. Good for him; a man of integrity.
This is the part I did not know but I do now. The Bidwill family — perhaps the worst family/owners in NFL history — bought the Cardinals in 1932 and claimed the title.
When the issue was brought up in 1963 and Maroons’ fans petitioned the NFL to get their title back, then Cardinals’ owner Charles Bidwill, Jr., wrote a letter to sportswriter Red Smith basically stating “no way, Jose.”
There was growing sentiment — owners like the late George Halas were behind it — to resolve this issue and it was brought up again at the owners’ meeting in 2003. Jeff Lurie (Philadelphia) and Dan Rooney (Steelers) and others offered a compromise that had then-Commissioner Paul Tagliabue’s blessing: let both share the title.
Cardinals’ owner Bill Bidwill — who was on a 3-man committee to study the issue!!!! — convinced the owners to not go with it by a 30-2 vote.
Bidwill also refused to comment on the story. (The gutless coward!!!).
My take is this: 1) How did Bidwill get to be on this committee? Talk about a conflict of interest. 2) He should be ashamed. His team has no right to the title. 3) The NFL should show some guts and restore the rightful winner of that title. That was bogus to tell the Maroons it was OK before playing the game and then when they did it, then tell them they couldn’t. That is hogwash. After all, it WAS the NFL’s screwup.
Commissioner Goodell, do the right thing before men like 92-year-old Nick Barbetta, fans of the Maroons, leave this mortal coil. Or better yet, Bidwill should grow a conscience and some integrity and do the right thing.
According to the story, the town of Pottsville put a curse — “the oldest and strongest in sports” — on the Cardinals that will not be lifted until this injustice is taken care of.
Besides rotten ownership, is there a better explanation for the Cardinals having one playoff win since 1947? ;—)
There’s no turning back for Brett Favre.
He made that point in spades at last week’s press conference.
He even did it with tears.
One of the all-time tough guys in the National Football League left the scene hardly able to make it through the hour’s press conference without breaking down.
He didn’t do much of the latter in his 17 seasons. It seemed as if you had to kill him to get him out of the lineup.
You know, I buy his argument. He has nothing left to prove. He holds basically every important quarterback mark — even the dreaded interceptions; all that means is that if you play 17 seasons, you WILL throw a lot of picks — has the Super Bowl win, a career-definer for many; and is a sure-fire first-ballot Hall-of-Famer — anyone that votes against him should no longer be allowed to vote!
Playing something at that high a level for 17 years definitely could leave someone drained and no longer able to get themselves juiced to continue to do the work necessary. He knows what it took to get there and likley how much more it takes to stay there. We know the competitor he is and if he says he can’t get juiced anymore, I believe him.
Here’s the rub: he’s simply the caretaker for many of these records until Peyton Manning gets there. So what? Records: outside of the games-played record of Cal Ripken, Cy Young’s 511 victories and maybe Joe Dimaggio’s 56-game hitting streak; are made to be broken. With more and more players going into their 40s in almost every sport, it’s a matter of time before most other records will be surpassed.
Don’t rest easy, Barry Bonds.