St. Louis and the NFL: A Star-Crossed 50 Year Love Affair
Shakespeare blamed the stars for the tragic love affair between Romeo and Juliet. But it is hard to believe that the fate of the NFL in St Louis was preordained. It is probably more a case of tragic, missed opportunities. Yet one thing is certain: St Louis loves professional football.
To great fanfare, Presidential candidate John F Kennedy landed in St Louis in mid-September,1960 as more than 20,000 St Louisans greeted him at Lambert Airport.In contrast, just a few weeks later a little-known team by the name of the St Louis Football Cardinals slipped into town from Chicago and played their first professional football game against the New York Giants in October,1960. The Cardinal debut took place at the old Sportsman's Park in North Saint Louis. In those early days, the team was so new that they actually practiced on the fields in Forest Park.
The road to St Louis for the former Chicago Cardinals had been winding and full of intrigue. Despite its status as the oldest franchise in the NFL, the Cardinals played second fiddle to the Chicago Bears and the legendary George Halas. Spurred by an investment from the Griesedieck family, owners of Falstaff beer in St Louis, the Cardinals ultimately made a commitment to move to St Louis when August Busch, the owner of Sportsman's Park, committed to build a new downtown stadium for both the football Cardinals and the baseball Cardinals.
Equally important at the time, the new Commissioner of the National Football League, Pete Rozelle, cleared the decks in Chicago for the move in order to achieve a new contract with network television. Given all these enhancements to their move, Violet Bidwill and her son Billy were very excited indeed by the prospects for their football team in St Louis. Rather than being Star-Crossed, the Cardinals and St Louis found conditions aligned in their favor and left both Chicago and later Atlanta very disappointed.
As it turns out, the St Louis football Cardinals played very competitive football throughout the 1960s. Cardinals fans from those days will never forget 5 ft 9 Pat Fisher picking up probably the greatest NFL running back ever, Jim Brown, playing at Cleveland and running him into the ground while depositing him on his head in the backfield of the Browns. The football Cardinals played pretty much even up with the Packers, Browns, Giants and Bears during these early years in the 60’s. Cardinals stars included Larry Wilson,, Sonny Randle, Charley Johnson, Jim Hart and Jim Bakken among others. Heisman Trophy winner John David Crow and Bobby Joe Conrad rounded out the star-studded roster.
During the 1970s, the football Cardinals enjoyed some very successful years. In particular,the hiring of Don Coryell in 1973 from San Diego State as head coach, considered a crazy move at the time, turned out to be one of the most astute moves in Cardinal history. Coryell, using his famed passing game approach to football, built what became known as the Cardiac Cards, a/k/a Air Coryell, a team which continually made electrifying comebacks to win games.
Perhaps the most dramatic example of the Cardiac Card era occurred at Busch Stadium in downtown St Louis in the early evening moonlight on a late Fall Sunday in 1976. Before a national TV audience watching on CBS and over 50,000 fans the Cardinals faced off against the despised Washington Redskins for the NFC East title.
With 20 seconds remaining and the Cardinals down by 4 points, lightning fast Cardinals receiver Mel Gray streaked across the goal line and took a bullet pass from quarterback Jim Hart and held it for a moment before the ball dropped to the ground as another former Cardinal Pat Fischer defended. Thinking the pass incomplete, the Redskins celebrated in the end zone. But wait : a referee has called for a conference of all the men in stripes to discuss the play. The huge crowd remained breathless as Cardinal fans waited for what seemed like an eternity to determine if the Cardiac Cards could once again pull it out at the end of the game, this time to win the NFC East championship.
In unforgettable fashion, the head referee walked to the goal line, looked around as if plotting his escape and proceeded to raise his hands directly above his head in the sweetest signal of touchdown any fan has ever seen. When the touchdown sign appeared, a rolling roar of delight and approval erupted from the hometown Cardinal crowd, the likes of which had never been heard before and maybe never since in downtown St Louis. Perhaps it is safer to say that nothing like that roar took place Downtown until Ricky Proehl made his game winning touchdown catch in the NFC championship game a few blocks away at the Dome over a quarter century later.
Naturally the Redskins were furious and George Allen was apoplectic as he stalked the sidelines and then ran onto the field to argue with the refs but to no avail as the refs made a hasty exit. From the moment Mel Gray made his reception, it became known as the legendary Phantom Catch and was a true highlight of the Cardiac Cards era.
During the 1980s the football Cardinals suffered through some difficult seasons. The team did not win another NFC East Division Championship and ended up losing more games than winning. At the same time, it became clear that NFL owners, including Bill Bidwill, believed that new stadiums were an essential element in competing effectively in the NFL. More and more, Busch Stadium, with its distant site lines and baseball seating, seemed ill suited for the football Cardinals and the modern NFL.
Despite substantial efforts, regional conflicts in St Louis between the City and the County torpedoed several stadium plans and the football Cardinals ultimately departed in 1988 for Arizona.
For the next 7 years St.Louis plodded along without an NFL football franchise. Yet, while the football Cardinals had departed, NFL football was not forgotten.. St Louis regional leaders worked together with the state of Missouri to finance a new combined convention center and athletic Dome facility in downtown St Louis. While the Dome was intended for an NFL expansion team, when the expansion effort failed, St Louis found itself in the unenviable position of owning a state-of-the-art domed football stadium without a team.
Maybe it's something about St Louis and NFL team owners who happened to be widows, like Viola Bidwill in 1960, but once again a widow, Georgia Frontiere , married to the late Carroll Rosenbloom, who owned the Los Angeles Rams, decided to move the Rams to her hometown of St Louis.
Behind huge support from St Louis football fans including the purchase of many thousands of long-term personal seat licenses, the new St Louis Rams played their first game at the Dome in the fall of 1995.
Dick Vermeil joined the team as head football coach in 1997 and after several losing seasons entered the 1999 season with high hopes. In spite of a season-ending injury to starting quarterback Trent Green, the Rams proceeded to create some of the most magical football in the history of the NFL, known as the Greatest Show on Turf. The Rams treated St Louis fans to the best and most exciting football anyone had ever seen in St Louis. Led by “second string” unheralded quarterback Kurt Warner and all-purpose running back Marshall Faulk, the Rams went on to play in the Super Bowl in 2 of the next 3 years, winning the Super Bowl in 2000.
For St. Louisans, it was almost like a dream. At the beginning of the 21st century, St Louis had become the center of the football universe hosting numerous playoff games in addition to action packed regular season games. By the middle part of the decade, however, Rams fortunes turned sour and the team never regained its winning ways. After an ominous change in ownership following the death of Ms. Frontiere, the team began looking to return to its former home in a new stadium in Los Angeles. Despite major efforts to keep the Rams in St. Louis , the team played its last game in St Louis in 2015.
As it happened the Rams and the NFL left themselves open to claims of misrepresentation, breach of NFL relocation guidelines and fraud in connection with their move to California. Ultimately St Louis settled with the NFL 6 years later for $ 790 million dollars, a sum far greater than anyone anticipated and one of the largest settlements by the NFL.
Many in St Louis believe that this conclusion to the Rams stay in St Louis has essentially ended the city's love-hate affair with the NFL. Others are not so sure. The Rams exit has left a big hole in the Mississippi Valley region of the United States without a team. The NFL itself continues to grow in popularity both in the US and overseas. St. Louisans will not be happy missing out on the football fun for too long and the $ 790 million goodbye present from the NFL will help ease the pain of departure. The Star-Crossed affair between the NFL and St Louis may still reignite one day.