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Author and unwitting pro football historian Joe Ziemba (When Football Was Football: The Chicago Cardinals and the Birth of the NFL) help us set the record straight on the often-misunderstood history of the first incarnation of pro football’s oldest continuous club – now know as the Arizona Cardinals. Arguably the least successful franchise in National Football League history, the Chicago version of the Cardinals originated years before the start of the NFL (née American Professional Football Association) as the Morgan Athletic Club – a dominant entry in Chicago’s fledgling amateur football leagues owned by house painter/plumber/visionary Chris O’Brien. In 1920, O’Brien’s club ponied up $100 to become a charter member of the APFA, quickly developing a pointed rivalry with a fellow founding franchise called the Decatur Staleys – soon to become the cross-town Chicago Bears two years later. Despite technically winning its first NFL championship in 1925 (controversially declared by Commissioner Joe Carr after the