One city, two teams?
By TOM MUSICK – Shaw Suburban Media
CHICAGO – Fifty years have passed since the Chicago Cardinals football team said goodbye to Comiskey Park and headed south on Interstate 55 toward St. Louis.
In doing so, the Cardinals left behind a loyal South Side fan base that had grown weary of watching its team lose. The Bears transitioned from the city’s favorite team to its only team, which it has remained despite a flurry of NFL expansion over the past half-century.
“To tell you the truth, we were like the White Sox,” said Phil Bouzeos, 89, who was the Cardinals equipment manager for a dozen seasons in Chicago. “It was Bears, Bears, Bears throughout the 12 years that I was there. But we had a good 10,000 season ticket holders that were really loyal. To this day, I bump into people who say, ‘Phil, have you got [commemorative] T-shirts or anything like that?’ ”
The Cardinals will return to Chicago this weekend, if only for a day. But the team’s return to its roots prompted the question: Could the Second City support a second team once again?
Jim Garrett thinks so. He is the president and chief executive officer of the Chicago Southland Convention & Visitors Bureau, which has strived to bring sports venues and franchises to Bridgeview, Oak Lawn and other communities south of Chicago.
“You sit back and think of places like California,” said Garrett, who traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark, for Chicago’s failed 2016 Olympic bid. “You’ve got the Raiders, 49ers, Chargers, and they are hosting sellout crowds every weekend.
“We’ve got avid sports fans in the Chicago area,” Garrett said. “If we found the right places and the right funding, the passion and the money, I think that conceivably we could either create an expansion team or attract one of those other teams that are not doing so well and create something here.”
Besides the San Francisco Bay area, the New York-New Jersey region is the only area that supports two NFL teams. The Giants and Jets play at the same stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., which is called “Giants Stadium” or “The Meadowlands” depending on which team is at home on any given weekend.
Bears defensive end Adewale Ogunleye grew up on New York’s Staten Island cheering for the Jets despite his family’s allegiance to the Giants.
He said a second team in Chicago would flounder if it tried to compete with the Bears.
“A second team wouldn’t last,” Ogunleye said. “There’s no way. This has taken decades and generations to build. Another team coming in here would be a laughingstock.”
The Cardinals frequently fit that description in Chicago, where they posted losing records in nine of their final 10 seasons before leaving town in 1959. The team achieved its greatest moment during a 1947 championship run, but the team’s punter, Jeff Burkett, died in a plane crash that season and its star tackle, Stan Mauldin, died after a heart attack in the 1948 season opener.
Bouzeos, who lives in Oak Brook, said the franchise never recovered from their deaths.
“The team made a big mistake when it left for St. Louis,” said Bouzeos, who will attend Sunday’s game. “Chicago can handle two football teams, especially nowadays. At that time, [George] Halas was the kingpin. He really talked the Cardinals into moving.”
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