Mostly played second fiddle to the crosstown Bears, and then relocated
The Arizona Cardinals are the longest tenured continuous operating pro football club in America. Only the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League have been in continuous operation longer in North America.
The Bidwill family has owned the Cardinals since 1932. Charles “Blue shirt Charley” Bidwill bought the team from Dr. David Jones, who was the second owner. A member of the Bidwill family has owned and operated the franchise ever since.
But how did the Bidwill family become owners of the franchise?
RELATED: BIDWILL OWNERS PART 1
RELATED: BIDWILL OWNERS PART 2
The first two parts are linked above. The information leading into this final part will explain quite a bit about the background of Charles Bidwill, who eventually was the VP of the Chicago Bears, his wife Violet’s ownership, the eventual takeover by Stormy and Bill Bidwill, and the Cardinals’ second NFL championship.
Here is the final part of this story.
Part 3
A new regime
Upon Charley Bidwill’s death prior to the 1947 NFL season, the club was now owned by his wife, Violet, who became the first female owner of a professional football team.
She took this seriously. Violet was of German and Irish descent, which meant she didn’t take anything from anybody. Violet wasn’t the type to be barefoot in the kitchen baking pies for her man when he got home from work. She was wealthy yet didn’t participate in Chicago’s social scene. Not a single photograph of her was ever published in the local paper in the society section.
However, her name and likeness were a constant in the Chicago sports pages.
Now, keep in mind, she did spend money. And she was a woman. Upon her death, her estate auctioned off 1,500 pairs of shoes, 500 coats, jackets, and furs, scores of dresses, and a matching purse and hat for every dress. In all, they let out for bid 3,000 lots of sportswear.14
At first, the other NFL owners wanted her to assign a representative to take care of business at the league meetings and be given a team vote. You know, a man.
But that was not who she was. She had been around the Cardinals for a long time with Charley. Now, she did have a sensitive side. After the Cardinals won the 1947 title, she was in tears after the game, wishing her late husband had been alive to see it. She knew how much being a part of a team meant to him.
Violet was also tough. Instead of assigning the team president or outright selling the club, she decided she would take over the family businesses.15 All of them, including the dog tracks and horse racing tracks. And that also included the Cardinals.
She ran the Cardinals in a male-dominated world, attended all owners’ meetings, was placed on committees, made suggestions, voted on league matters, and kept the team going.
Officially, she is listed as the second Bidwill to own the franchise and the fourth majority owner.
Continued success and a new home
Charley and Violet were not able to conceive children, so at some point, they adopted two infant boys. They named them Charles W. Bidwell Jr., also known as “Stormy,” and his new younger brother, William Vogel “Bill” Bidwell. The two were not biological brothers. Stormy was born in 1928, while Bill was conceived three years later. Neither knew they were adopted until Violet passed away, and neither was ready to take on a position with a pro football team, as Stormy was 18 and Bill was 16 when Charley passed away.
Coach Jim Conzelman guided the Cardinals to an 11-1-0 record in 1948, again, just one game ahead of the Bears, and defeated them in the season finale 24-21. Winning back-to-back Western Division titles placed them in a return to the NFL Championship Game, again against the 9-2-1 Eagles.
This time around, the game was hosted by the Eagles at Shibe Park in front of 28,864 fans and in a snowstorm, commonly called “The Philly Blizzard.” The game was 0-0 going into the final quarter, to which the Cardinals fumbled on their end of the field with 1:05 remaining, and the Eagles scored from five yards out to win 7-0.
Violet married Walter Wolfner in 1949, a one-time St. Louis coffee broker. She attended owners’ meetings and continued to perform league business just like the other owners, much to the chagrin of her male counterparts.
In 1951, Wolfner was named the team’s managing director, while Stormy became team President, and Bill was appointed team VP. At this juncture, Wolfner had control of the franchise.
Beginning in 1954, the Cardinals played an annual exhibition game in St. Louis called the “Cardinal Glennon Charity Game” to which the team signed a 10-year agreement.
Beginning in 1957, other wealthy men started to circulate and inquire with the NFL owners about getting an expansion club. The owners rebuffed them all and stated their 12-team entity was just fine. In 1958, one man was Texas oilman Lamar Hunt, who wished to place a team in Dallas. He was told the league had no plans for expansion, but the Cardinals might be for sale.
When Hunt met with Violet and Wolfner, they informed him they would consider selling him 20% of the Cardinals,16 but the team wasn’t going to be moved to Texas. She knew her football, and she was a shrewd businesswoman. In 1960, Hunt and seven other wealthy football minds founded the American Football League, commonly known as “AFL5.”
That same year, the Cardinals did indeed relocate, but not to Dallas, but to St. Louis, 17 after news spread that the infant AFL would place a team in this Midwestern city. Halas then agreed to pay the Cardinals $500,000 over 10 years if they moved out of Chicago. The annual charity game and Wolfner’s business connections had set up the team to simply relocate there.
Violet passed away in 1962 from an allergic reaction to penicillin in a Miami Beach doctor’s office.
Phoenix rising
Violet Bidwill Wolfner left 90% control of the Cardinals to Stormy and Bill Bidwill.18 They would become the third and fourth Bidwell family members to own the team. Personality-wise, they were polar opposites. Wolfner was subsequently fired from his position. He would later sue, but did not win. The brothers found out about their adoptions in probate court.
The Bidwill brothers operated the Cardinals until 1972, when Bill Bidwill bought out his brother for $6 million. Stormy Bidwill attempted to bid for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1975 but failed. He then ran Sportsman’s Race Track in Chicago before turning it over to his son in 1995.
The Cardinals played their home games at Busch Stadium from 1960-1965 and then at Busch Memorial Stadium from 1966-1987. Bill Bidwill tried for years to get the City of St. Louis to build an indoor stadium, but to no avail. The Cardinals never hired a General Manager while they played their home games in St. Louis.
Bill Bidwill decided to move the franchise to Arizona in 1988 and cemented the deal with a handshake with both local and state officials.19 The Cardinals had their choice of four cities: Jacksonville, Baltimore, Phoenix, and St. Louis.
They were christened the “Phoenix Cardinals” and promised a new $150 million stadium, which had been on hold awaiting Bidwill’s decision. One of the features was a retractable roof.
In 1994, the name was altered to the “Arizona Cardinals” to better represent the entire state in an attempt to gather fans across the entire state.
On November 3, 2025, Charles “Stormy” Bidwill, Jr., passed away at the age of 97. Bill had died on October 2, 2019, at the age of 88. Bill Bidwill had five children, one of whom is Michael J. Bidwill. He is now the Principal Owner, Chairman, and President of the Arizona Cardinals.
And the fifth Bidwill family member to own the team. Today, Forbes values the Cardinals at $5.5 billion, up from $4.3 billion in 2024.
For most of the 1930s through the 1960s, the NFL was mostly seven men and one woman: George Halas (Bears), Tim Mara (Giants), Art Rooney (Steelers), Curly Lambeau (Packers), George Preston Marshall (Redskins), Bert Bell (Eagles), and Charles and Violet Bidwill (Cardinals).
Notes
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14 Adeline Fitzgerald, “She Seldom Wore Her Many Hats,” Toledo Blade, December 2, 1963
15 Darren Urban, “Violet Bidwell’s Imprint Remains with Cardinals,” azcardinals.com, March 11, 2025
16 John Eisenberg, “Epilogue,” The League, Basic Books, 2018
17 Robert Morrison, “St. Louis Gets Pro Football Chicago Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 14, 1960
18 Bob Underwood, “Remembering Violet Bidwell Wolfner,” The Big Red Zone, January 10, 2020
19 Lisa Harris, “Football Cardinals to leave St. Louis,” UPI, January 15, 1988
Category: General Sports
