Which Current NFL Franchise Originated as the Morgan Athletic Club in 1898: The Chicago Cardinals Line

The Arizona Cardinals are the current NFL franchise that originated as the Morgan Athletic Club in 1898. The club formed on Chicago's South Side, took the name Racine Normals around 1901, and reorganized as the Racine Cardinals in 1920. It joined the American Professional Football Association that September, became the Chicago Cardinals in 1922, and has played in St. Louis and Arizona since.

That bare sequence hides the harder question. How does a neighborhood athletic club from the 1890s survive 125-plus years of league mergers, relocations, and ownership changes as one continuous franchise? The answer sits in a chain of paperwork, league meetings, and naming decisions that historians can trace year by year. This explainer works through that chain, the numbers behind it, and the places where the record gets fuzzy.

Mechanism: how a neighborhood club becomes a league franchise

The Morgan Athletic Club began as a social and athletic organization, not a business. Members formed teams, rented fields, and played local schedules. The name came from Morgan Street on the South Side, and the early club had no league affiliation, no paid roster, and no formal corporate structure.

The bridge from club to franchise was a series of small, documented steps. The team adopted the Racine Normals name after moving its operations near Racine Avenue. By 1920, it had become the Racine Cardinals. That year, the newly formed American Professional Football Association needed member clubs, and the Cardinals were among the founding members at the league's September 17, 1920 meeting in Canton, Ohio.

Why does founding membership matter? Because it is the legal hinge. A league franchise is a membership interest, not a mascot or a stadium. Once the Cardinals held an APFA membership, later renamed NFL membership, the franchise could be sold, moved, and renamed without dissolving. The 1898 club identity is the origin story; the 1920 membership is the enforceable asset.

A second mechanism kept the lineage intact through relocations. When a team moves cities, the league treats the franchise as continuing rather than as a new entity. The Chicago Cardinals became the St. Louis Cardinals in 1960, and the St. Louis Cardinals became the Arizona Cardinals in 1988. Each move required league approval and an ownership decision. Each time, the franchise record, including the 1920 founding membership, traveled with the team.

Plain-language version: the club's name changed many times, but the seat at the league table never did.

Quantified context: dates, counts, and distances

Concrete numbers make the timeline checkable. The club's origin is generally dated to 1898. Its first league season came in 1920, a gap of 22 years. The Chicago years ran from 1920 to 1959, roughly 40 seasons. The St. Louis years ran from 1960 to 1987, about 28 seasons. The Arizona years began in 1988 and continue past 2025, more than 35 seasons.

Geography tells the same story in miles. Chicago to St. Louis is roughly 300 miles. St. Louis to the Phoenix area is roughly 1,260 miles. The franchise has thus moved about 1,560 miles across three metropolitan areas while keeping one league membership.

The league itself changed size across that span. The 1920 founding meeting drew representatives of about a dozen clubs, though the exact count is debated. The modern NFL has 32 franchises. The Cardinals are one of only two current franchises that trace founding membership to that 1920 meeting, alongside the Chicago Bears, whose lineage runs through the Decatur Staleys. That scarcity is why the 1898 origin matters to historians: it is one of the oldest continuous professional football lineages in the country.

One caveat on the numbers: early-season records, game counts, and even franchise founding dates vary by source. Pre-1933 NFL standings are less standardized than modern ones, so totals from that era should be read as best reconstructions rather than certified counts.

Timeline: from Morgan Athletic Club to Arizona Cardinals

The 1944 Card-Pitt season is the most counterintuitive row in that table. Wartime player shortages pushed two franchises to pool rosters for a single season. The combined team was neither a merger nor a permanent change, and both franchises continued separately afterward. It is a useful reminder that franchise continuity survives temporary operational oddities.

Edge cases: name collisions and the St. Louis question

The Cardinals lineage creates two easy confusions. The first is the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team. The football franchise played in St. Louis from 1960 to 1987, sharing a city and a name with a long-established baseball club. The two organizations were always separate businesses in separate leagues. When the football team left for Arizona in 1988, the baseball Cardinals stayed put.

The second confusion is the name Racine. The Racine Normals and Racine Cardinals took their name from Racine Avenue in Chicago, not from Racine, Wisconsin. Readers who assume a Wisconsin origin are making a reasonable but incorrect inference. The documentary record ties the name to the Chicago street and neighborhood.

A third edge case involves the word origin itself. The 1898 date is the club's founding, but the franchise's league membership dates to 1920. Both statements are true at different levels. Saying the Cardinals are an 1898 franchise describes the organization's community roots. Saying they are a 1920 founding member describes the legal entity's league status. Good histories state which claim they are making.

Misconceptions: what the Cardinals are not

Misconception one: the Cardinals are a relocated expansion team. They are not. Expansion teams are new franchise grants. The Cardinals moved an existing membership three times.

Misconception two: the Arizona Cardinals and the St. Louis Cardinals football team are different franchises. They are the same franchise under different city names. The 1988 move did not create a new entity.

Misconception three: the 1898 club was a professional team. It was not, at least not in the modern sense. Early club teams mixed amateur and paid players, and formal professionalism arrived unevenly. The 1920 league membership is the better marker of professional status.

Misconception four: founding membership guarantees historical accuracy. It does not. Early league records are incomplete, and some founding-meeting details rest on secondary accounts. Historians flag this openly rather than papering over it.

Red-flag warnings for anyone citing this history:

Do not treat pre-1933 win-loss totals as official league statistics. Do not equate the 1898 club with the 1920 franchise when precision matters. Do not assume Racine refers to Wisconsin. Do not confuse the football Cardinals with the baseball Cardinals. Do not describe the 1944 Card-Pitt season as a permanent merger.

Comparison: how the Cardinals lineage differs from other founding lines

The table shows why the Cardinals are unusual. Most long-lived franchises either stayed in one city or entered the league after the founding meeting. The Cardinals combine an 1890s club origin, founding membership, and multiple cross-country moves. That combination is rare and is the core reason the 1898 question keeps surfacing.

Practical actions: how to verify the lineage yourself

If you want to check this history rather than take it on faith, work in a fixed order.

Start with league-level records. The Pro Football Hall of Fame and the NFL's own historical pages list founding members and franchise histories. Use these for the 1920 date and the membership claim. Cross-check the club-level origin. Team media guides and encyclopedia entries cover the Morgan Athletic Club and the Racine name changes. Compare at least two independent sources. Separate the two claims. Write down the club founding date and the league membership date as distinct facts. This prevents sloppy citations. Trace each relocation with a date and a league approval reference. Relocations are documented events, not folklore. Flag uncertainty explicitly. Where sources disagree on early records, say so rather than picking the most dramatic number.

The threshold for a solid citation is simple: one authoritative league or hall-of-fame source for the 1920 membership, plus one reputable reference work for the 1898 club origin. If a claim cannot clear that bar, treat it as contested.

Limitations: where the record thins out

The 1898 origin rests on club and local history rather than on league paperwork, because no league existed to keep records. The 1920 founding membership is better documented but still subject to gaps in early meeting minutes. Pre-1933 statistics are reconstructions, and different reference works sometimes disagree on game counts and standings.

The deeper limitation is definitional. "Originated as" can mean the community organization, the professional team, or the legal franchise. Each has a different start date. This explainer uses the club origin for 1898 and the league membership for 1920, and it states which claim is which. Anyone who needs a single date should say which definition they are using.

A final caveat for researchers: franchise histories are maintained partly by the teams themselves, and team-published histories have an interest in emphasizing longevity. That does not make them wrong, but it does mean independent cross-checking is the professional standard. The Cardinals' 1898 lineage is well supported. The precise details of the earliest years are best described as strongly evidenced rather than certain.

This article is general educational information about sports history, not a definitive historical ruling or a substitute for archival research. Readers who need citable precision for academic, legal, or publication purposes should consult league archives, the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and qualified sports historians.