The primary focus of today's discourse centers on the historical context and significance of the 1947 NFL Championship game, featuring the Chicago Cardinals. Our esteemed guest, historian Joe Ziemba, elucidates the remarkable journey of the Cardinals during that illustrious season, culminating in their first championship victory.

Check out Joe on his podcast, When Football Was Football, on the Sports History Network and in any of his well-written books on football history.

This episode meticulously examines the arduous path the Cardinals traversed, including their previous record of consecutive losses, which poignantly underscores their eventual triumph. We delve into the dynamics of the game itself, highlighting the pivotal moments and strategies that defined this championship match against the Philadelphia Eagles. As we reflect on this pivotal chapter in NFL history, we invite our audience to appreciate the depth and richness of the narrative that encapsulates the spirit of perseverance and resilience within the realm of professional football.

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It's time once again to talk about another National Football League championship game before the Super Bowls. And this time, we're going to talk about the city of Chicago.

Joe Ziamba comes to join us to tell us about this great year for the Cardinals. And it's coming up in just a moment.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history. Your host, Darren Hayes, is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

Hello, my football friends. This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And we are in our championship series, and boy, are we having a blast.

Darren, thank you as always. And I like the comment about the two bird teams, but you're absolutely correct.

And a couple of teams that had been absent since the playoffs started in the 30s and finally made it, it wasn't easy for either of them.

Yeah, the comment was on the teams, Joe. It wasn't that you're for the Birds. So I just want to make that. Want to make that clear.

I would understand if it was. Thank you. So.

Yeah, two. Two really good teams who suffered a lot to get here. Eagles had not been to the playoffs ever. First time in 15 years. It was really tough.

And here we have the Cardinals, who just a few years earlier had lost 29 games in a row, still an NFL record. You throw in a key player for the Cardinals sleeping in a hospital chair before a big game, players describing a field they played on as an ice rink.

We have penalties for illegal shoes and we also have the best two word description ever for a team winning an NFL championship. So we'll share that tonight.

Darren, wow, that is a lot to look forward to. And we're always looking forward to your great storytelling and telling us about this great championship year.

Oh, great. Thank you. No, if you really want to start talking about it, I'm a little bit more knowledgeable about the Cardinals.

They finished 1 in 10 and under coach Ernie Nevers we had player revolts, players quitting the NFL in one day. Five halfbacks left the team in training camp.

So Ernie retired from pro coaching after that season and Jimmy Councilman was brought in, the college coach from Washington University in St. Louis. And Jimmy was with the team for three years. The war broke out. The Cardinals, like the Eagles, lost a lot of players to the military service.

The card pits team said was so bad the Chicago Tribune wrote about them. They're not the card pits, they're the carpets because people walk all over them.

We had back to back zero and 10 seasons for the Cardinals to help solidify that. I guess that reputation is the worst team in pro football for a while.

They had great draft choices, including the first bonus baby of the NFL, Charlie Trippy, the halfback from the University of Georgia and Bidwell Chase Trippie all over the country finally signed him in New York for a reported $100,000 over four years. And this is when rookies were still getting $110 a game. So it was pretty spectacular for Charlie Trippie to get that kind of money.

That'd be Charlie Trippy from Georgia, Pat Harder from Wisconsin, Marshall Goldberg from Pittsburgh and Pat. Did I mention Pat Harder Harder? Christman, why am I drawing a blank here? I'm supposed to know this stuff. So they had four guys in the backfield.

Was it Ollie Matson?

At that time Ali was too early. So Goldberg, Chrisman and harder.

Okay, I guess I didn't get a.

Paul Christman from Missouri. I apologize to all the Cardinals fans out there who now know I really know nothing about pro football history.

They started out with a great exhibition season where Charlie Tripping was unleashed and then went into the regular season. Eventually they finished 9 and 3 and the Eagles that year were 8 and 4 but had to beat Pittsburgh in order to to make the NFL championship game.

But it was a tough year for the Cardinals.

Not only did they lose their owner Charles Bidwill, but after a game in Los Angeles where the team took a four day train ride to play the Rams, their puncher Jeff Burkett suffered appendicitis attack and was forced to stay for a couple days in a Los Angeles hospital. And he elected or they wanted him to fly back instead of riding the train.

All that time with the fresh stitches and unfortunately the plane was lost in Utah.

So Burkett they thought would be one of the leading punters and he was at the time might have been the one of the leading punters of all time playing for the Cardinals till he was lost.

So going through the season, the Cardinals again as I mentioned from 29 straight losses were coming back, seemed to have everything going their way until mid season. They lost a couple of games in a row. Suddenly the Chicago Bears, the perennial favorites of National Football League.

The Cardinals and the Bears played in what we truly would remember as a truly spectacular game with a truly extraordinary beginning. The problem was Jimmy Councilman who was back coaching the Cardinals and thought they could beat the Bears with sort of a trick play.

He would take Babe Dementia for Purdue halfback and when they scouted the Bears noticed that one of the linebackers for the Bears would pick up some of the receivers who was much slower than the receivers. So he drew up this fantastic play.

He said if we get the ball first, no matter where we are in the field, we're going to throw a pass to Dementia who was probably the fastest player in the Cardinals.

And no one, absolutely no one on the Bears would be able to catch him if they could get the ball first, if they had good field position and if Babe had time to practice this play in practice. Well, the story goes, it's kind of well known in the Cardinals annals was Babe's wife was expecting a baby that week.

And so on Tuesday, when they wanted to practice the play, Babe was nowhere to be found. On Wednesday, Babe didn't make it to practice nor on Thursday.

And councilman finally got a hold him in the hospital and said, Babe, boy, this is really important what you're doing, but this game kind of has some importance to us as well. How's it look over there without putting pressure? And Babe said, coach, I'll be there as soon as I can.

Well, meanwhile, the key guy in this key play, which could mean the NFL championship for the Cardinals, was sleeping in the hospital chair next to his wife every night. The baby was finally born late in the week. Babe did not have time to practice with the team.

At quarterback Tommy Thompson would end up setting a record in the NFL title game. Steve Van Buren, a Hall of Famer, just also was one of the leading rushers, if not the leading rusher in the National Football League.

They had some really tough linemen like Buckle Kilroy, who's I think a predecessor to Dick Butkus. There was rumors that bucko liked to buy a bite teeth in the pile, in the huddle, underneath the when the tackle was made.

So as mentioned, the Eagles ended up eight and four and beat the Steelers to qualify. Cardinals had the home field advantage and at this point I should probably say, did I miss anything?

Darren, is there anything you wanted to ask about the season thus far?

I just wanted to make a point of this because we had the key the three teams that merged during World War II that really weren't very good. I think The Steagalls in 43 were 5 and 4 and you just described a few minutes ago about the car pits. Not very good teams.

But these three teams that were struggling so much during the war really rebounded within three or four years to. They're all playing in the postseason, and there really isn't a postseason except for the championship game at that time.

So.

So, you know, the Eagles and the Steelers playing for the east and a play in game, I guess. And you know, of course the Cardinals playing in a championship against the Eagles. So that's kind of an amazing turnaround.

And how much the war changed football.

I mean, not just changed it dynamically across the board and changed it forever, but it also brought these players and trained players while people were over there in their military training and on bases to make them better athletes and made. Made the NFL better. And the bottom dwellers rose to the top. So it's kind of an interesting dynamic.

They did that whole decade was quite interesting. And use that example of the card pits and, and as you mentioned, how they both bounced back and became contending teams as well as the Eagles.

So it was quite a unique decade for the NFL. And when these teams got back together and it was a coaching challenge as well.

They've been shot at, they've blown up ships, they've been in battle, they have the worst possible conditions.

And Hallis, who was pretty strict disciplinarian, decided to get rid of all rules that did not stick in the NFL, you know, because coaches have gone back to being pretty strict. But yeah, the way things played both on and off the field for the NFL was pretty remarkable then after the war.

Yeah, and it was also kind of neat.

We have a good friend of the podcast, Steve Massey, wrote a book on the 47 Steelers because it's the only time, it's the only time the Steelers made the playoffs until the 70s when they played, had the Immaculate Reception game, that was the next playoff game that they were ever in.

But Steve, you know, brought up a point that they were coached by Jock Sutherland at the time, who's a famous University of Pittsburgh coach before that, and they were still running the single wing, where most of the teams, both in college and the pros had, had changed over to the T formation because of the success that the Bears had had, you know, earlier in the decade.

So it's a amazing thing that you got this dynamic of these two offenses that are different from each other, different personnel, and people are really trying to learn the game and starting to strategize the game more than they ever had before, which is. Takes us, you know, springboards us right into the modern times.

Does the. The T formation was so amazing and how different teams at both levels, as you mentioned, try to, I guess, absorb it and become experts at it.

With Clark Shaughnessy, of course, who worked for the Bears and went out to the west coast to coach. And that's a guy that deserves a lot more credit in football, Clark Shaughnessy.

But yeah, that T formation and then the Bears, what they did with it was pretty amazing.

Yeah, most definitely. Okay, so. So we have a great season.

You know, the NFL executives got to be, you know, pawing their hands and, you know, really excited because now they've got more teams involved than ever before. It's making. Helping the league to grow, getting these other markets that were sort of downtrodden in years past.

Now they're excited about pro football and they got a great championship game lined up. So what can you tell us from there?

Well, look like it would be an incredible game. Maybe the Eagles passing game against the Cardinals rushing game with the green backfield of the Cardinals.

And I should mention that during the season, Marshall Goldberg, a move more specifically to defense. And Elmer Engsman, a native of Chicago who went to Mount Carmel High School and then went to Notre Dame, was really fast.

And in this championship game, it looked like Jimmy Councilman was a genius for having Engsman in the game. So the Eagles had that short week of practice. The Cardinals had two full weeks to prepare.

Councilman gave them a couple days off, made them practice on Christmas Day. There's a lot of moaning and groaning about that, but that was life and pro football. The players were all grateful to be there.

This season started out pretty well before that mid season couple of game losing streak.

So at that time, that was a long time for pro football. Goldberg even was in the military for a couple of years.

So all these guys gave so much during World War II, as we just talked about how impact it had on the league itself, but also on some of the players. But they came back. And one thing about the Cardinals that everyone saw the dream backfield, but they had a fantastic line as well.

This is back in the days when Guys went both ways. But some of the the big names on the line were Chet Bulger, one of my favorites, a big tackle.

Bossier was a funny guy and he had told many stories about his time with the Cardinals. For example, he said he got in shape by going to the park and kicking the football and running after it.

Because back then we didn't have year round training, we had to get jobs. These guys, except Charlie Trippy needed some money so concealed bulger 260 pounds of them, kicking the ball, running after it.

And he said he didn't overdo it. He walked back before he kicked it again. He also listened to Jimmy Councilman who said he was too light for a tackle in the NFL.

And he said, well, Coach, what can I do about that? And Councilman said, well, I want you to go home this summer and eat a lot of steak and drink a lot of beer.

And Bulger said, I'll be glad to do that, coach. And he did. So Bulger, one of my favorites. At the ends we had Billy Duel and Mel kutner.

Stan Malden, only weighing 250 pounds but would have been probably a perennial all pro if he gained a little weight, which he did. And unfortunately he passed, passed away in the locker room next season. But Bulger and Malden were two great tackles. The guards were.

Buster Ramsey who was thought from his teammates is probably too talkative, but they thought also that he was probably the one guy who wasn't in the hall of Fame way back when that he should be today. But that hasn't happened. So. But before the game Councilman was talking and everybody thought this would be a tossup.

We had the passing game against the ground game of the Cardinals, but also as I mentioned, Steve Van Buren who was such an excellent runner. And Councilman even said that Greasy Neil has a fine team. Greasy Neil being the coach of the Eagles.

And by the way, Darren, you may not know this, but recent book came out about the early days of coaching with Greasy Neil, you should pick it up. It's wonderfully written. The author has been complete compared to people like Hemingway and F. Scotch Fitzgerald.

But if you want to learn about Greasy's early days, pick that book up.

Yeah, I think the author maybe can clean the shoes of of those guys. Maybe. Maybe on a good day. Thank you.

They're all good looking guys, I know that. So Councilman feared the Philadelphia line. He said, it's a lot stronger than most people think.

And another thing going for the Cardinals and one exhibition game in a regular season game, they'd already beaten Eagles twice that season. Now they're going to be at their home field at Comiskey park in Chicago. Unfortunately, Chicago in the winter is a little cold.

The field was kind of frozen. Vince Benotis, the another lineman of the center said that the field was hard as ice.

And so Councilman told his players to wear gym shoes during the game to see if they could get better traction. And it wasn't below zero like we've seen sometimes in Green Bay, but it was very cold.

And like I said, Councilman had that foresight to have the players wear gym shoes or sneakers, as you want to call them. And Bonona said that really helped that they were able to give us a lot of traction.

And Chet Bolcher, I remember saying something like it was so bitterly cold with the wind, but if you play in Chicago that late in the year, that that's certainly going to happen.

He also had a funny story told about the NFL didn't have a lot of money back then compared to today, that they got one jersey at the beginning of the season and wool jersey was hot as heck during those early games in September, but by the time the end of December they were playing, it fit just fine and kind of kept them warm. So they expected a fairly decent crowd for this game, but only about 30,000 showed up.

Comiskey park crew did a great job of covering the field with hay and a tarp before, but it was still cold. In fact, the Eagles and Jack Ferrani said that Comiskey was like a skating rink. He hadn't seen anything like it before.

But we had taken the weather into account as we got ready in the pre game, we had on regular football shoes, but the cleats were filed pretty sharp and to a point. That gave us the traction we needed. And I thought they'd work much better than the tennis shoes the Cardinals were wearing.

Problem was that there was a game that was almost decided before it started because in the Eagles locker room, the ball boys for the Cardinals notice they were filing down these cleats to a point, should have been flat and it would give them better traction. They told councilman about it and he waited till the game got started.

So here we are a couple minutes in the game, Eagles are starting a drive and all of a sudden councilman asked the ref to check the shoes on. On the Eagles particularly. I think it was Tommy Thompson the quarterback.

Sure enough, the Eagles were penalized for improper equipment and stopped the drive. And even till the end of the game, Greasy Nail was just hostile and livid about this decision that it cost this team a bit of a drive.

So the Cardinals meanwhile had their gym shoes on. And even the Green Bay Gazette got a look at the shoes and said they had filed their cleats down to razor sharpness.

So two penalties were given out for illegal equipment. But it didn't make much sense because when the Eagles put on their gym shoes, maybe they weren't as good as the Cardinals.

One of the newspapers said it was like 22 drunk guys on a on ice skating rink stumbling around each other trying to get something done. But the Cardinals were also obsessed a bit with the eight man line of the Eagles that day.

And I've looked at film and I know a couple other guys who are coaches have looked at that and we're not sure it really was an eight man line.

But the plan was for the Cardinals to attack it in one spot, spread the lineman apart, let a back run through, and there wasn't going to be much opposition in the backfield. So the Eagles apparently were planning on the Cardinals not passing too much.

But George Hallis said something about the eight man line before the game. He said, bah, all you got to do is pinch it back through there and he's practically alone in the clear. And that's exactly what happened.

About six minutes in the game, Charlie Trippy, who we mentioned burst through the line and he was gone. Vince Bonona's doing a lot of the blocking, but Trippy scored there.

And so an alternative there was for Thompson to start throwing the ball because Steve Van Buren wasn't having much luck on the ground. But then a little later, Elmer Engsman went through the same way Charlie Trippy did and won 70 yards for a score.

Pat Harder kicked the extra point and suddenly was 14 nothing with six minutes left in the half. Well, in the third quarter, excuse me, the second quarter, then Thompson finally found his end McHugh for a 53 yard touchdown.

It was 14 to 7 at the half. Still still anybody's game here in Chicago in the frozen field.

But in the third quarter, Charlie Trippy received a pun at his own 25 and he didn't really have any blockers.

But with three Eagles in front of him, some of the stories were great that Trippie moved to his left, he fell down once, evaded the three defenders, went back, fell down again and went 75 yards into the End zone. And was supposedly said that Christie Nail was yelling to his players. They said, hey, get up. You know, he wait, get ready.

He's going to be coming around this way again sometime. So Trippy did one of the most magical punt returns in Cardinals history. Doe is 21 7, Darren. Then the third period.

No, no, you got us on the edge of our seats. Please, please continue. This is a good game.

And that led to the Eagles not being able to score again. Van Buren was limited to 26 yards and 18 rushing attempts. However, Tommy Thompson had a wonderful game, breaking the NFL record.

He just said, I don't care how he did as long as we won. So they asked councilman, after the game, did you bring up the fact that Charles Bidwell had passed away and Jeff Burkett as some kind of incentive?

And he said nope. He said, these boys were pretty grim without me trying to make them go out. On a maudlin note, however greasy, Neil was still fired up after the game.

He said it wouldn't show up in the final score. This is referring back to those early penalties.

But the start of the game, we were penalized five yards for illegal equipment when we could have made a first down. And that cost us 1, 2. So the Cardinals won 28 to 21. Fortunately or unfortunately, that's the last championship for the franchise.

Now we're going to be going on, it's 47. That's 78 years, the longest drought between championships for any type of franchise. Hockey, football, baseball, etc.

We're still waiting to see if maybe the Cardinals will break that drought this year. But for at least one year, they were the champions.

And I mentioned at the beginning it Brought on the most wonderful two word description of the title. And this is from Phil Benningson, who was serving as the kind of the president of the team.

Violet Bidwell, the wife of Charles, was still running the team. Benningson was running the team. And afterwards they said to him, Mr. Benningson, how do you feel about this win? He said, I'll tell you in two words.

Wonderful. So you got to think about that, Darren. That's how the Cardinals stole the hearts of Chicago, at least for one season, and frozen Comiskey Park.

Wow. Well, well said. Well, great story. Great championship game.

Now I like to bring up something because sort of it's not his final year, but Jimmy Conzelman has been a part of the National Football League from the beginning.

This, this is his other championship with the Cardinals. And he's in and out, you know, owns, owns his own team and is in and out through National Football League every year. He's, he's a.

Something, a story to be told in this game. And I think it's a great career and needs to be admired and this is probably a great time to do it because he's, he's going out on top basically.

So it's just kind of a neat thing.

He was so good and the players just love Coach Councilman. They called him a blur of activity, chain smoking. He drank Coca Cola by the bottle and would have Coca Cola sitting by.

Thought he had a maid with the Red Grange tour and Red couldn't play. And Jimmy drove up to the park that day and he said he saw this line of people waiting to buy tickets, he thought, he said, we finally made it.

Till he found out that they were there for the refund because Red Range couldn't play against them that day. But won the championship in 28 with Providence, as you mentioned, and then went into college coaching very successfully.

Won 3 or 4 or 5 Missouri Valley Conference championships with Washington. And Washington is not looked upon as a big school, but they at that time were considered a major college in terms of football, playing a lot of the.

A lot of the big schools we know as a major Division 1 team. So when he came back, it was great. The Cardinals had high hopes.

No one anticipated the war would decimate all the teams and decimate really the country and the way we did things. And he came back triumphantly, looked like a genius.

He had a teenage boy at the time and wanted to be closer to his home in St. Louis is what he did. But as you mentioned, what a guy. I mean, what an encyclopedia of the NFL for those first three decades was Jimmy Compson.

Yeah, it's. It's amazing.

And so they ended up. He ended up telling them, you know, they didn't want Pottsville in Detroit to play in Pottsville to lose.

They wouldn't get the gate for the Cardinals game. They're supposed to play back to back days. So they canceled the game with Detroit. But that could have been Detroit's opportunity.

If Detroit wins, that beats Pottsville.

They are right in neck and neck with the Cardinals for the best record in the National Football League and probably would have been forced to play each other there in the last two weeks of the season for that. So got it. Got some bad breaks, you know, from the, the commander in chief of the league.

But you know, that could, it could have been a different outcome for him. Could have been three championships. Who knows?

It's kind of amazing too, when you look back at the 20s, how these teams had to rely on train travel and Akron in the early 20s played a game on Saturday, then came all the way to Chicago to play the Bears and what they thought was an exhibition. Crazy scheduling, crazy misunderstandings on a lot of different things as well. But how much time they spent on trains back then?

You talk about someone today and said, oh yeah, Cardinals would go to Los Angeles on a train for four days. What?

Right, right. Definitely a great era and great story, Joe, and we really appreciate you using your knowledge and everything to, to tell us that.

Do you have any projects coming up on the podcast or anything you want to talk about that for your listeners and your fans to look forward to?

One will be the next revision of my book, When Football Was Football coming out, I would think in the next couple of months and then hopefully later in the year, early next year.

My biography of a very special person is called Monelli from From the NFL to Baton and Back and his historic journey of a guy who volunteered to go serve in World War II when he didn't really have to at the time, and was a Japanese prisoner for the entire World War II until he came back. So pretty inspirational stuff. I'm just amazed when I find out things that people said about him then and the things he went through.

So those are kind of the fun things. Got some speaking engagements for anyone who's interested in pro football history.

You might want to think about attending the Pro Football Researchers Association Convention this summer in Minneapolis.

So this is stuff that was based on the Sternum papers, which are now at the Pro Football hall of Fame which just gives us a really good idea of what the cost and expenses were for playing pro football way back 100 years ago. So I hope it'll, it'll be fun. But that'll be this summer in Minneapolis, the PFA convention.

Well, are you going to be able to sleep at all the next few months because you're pretty busy guy here.

Yeah, it might be. What I'm going to probably do is start reading one of my own books and that'll put me to sleep rather rapidly.

Joe, we are really looking forward. We're excited that you're getting back on.

You're getting the podcast fired up again and you got your typewriter going and you got the books coming out and you know, the reincarnation of your, your great classic that you had from a couple decades ago. Some new information on it. We're excited about that in the Mazzanelli story. Story needs to be told.

And you know, we know that's a great, passionate story that you are a great right person to tell.

No, thank you so well, we appreciate you coming on, Joe, and being a part of this championship series is your second stint with us and telling this story. You started us off in 33 and now you're up to 47 with the Cardinals.

And we really appreciate you coming on and preserving the football history with us.

It's like the other ones. I know it'll be superlative and I'll be first in line to pick one up. So again, thank you for allowing me to be on the program tonight.

That's all the football history we have today, folks. Join us back tomorrow for more of your football history.

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