NFL Approves Cardinals’ Move

PHOENIX —  Still just a-lookin’ for a home, the Cardinals Tuesday got permission from 26 National Football League owners to move here, suddenly reducing St. Louis, the nation’s 11th-largest metropolitan area, to the status of another expansion applicant with a rented room at the winter meetings for a wet bar, a buffet and a model of the proposed new stadium.

The vote was 26-0, with abstentions by the Raiders and Miami Dolphins. The Raiders pleaded legal reasons. Miami owner Joe Robbie abstained as a favor to his friend, Joe Foss, an executive with the Phoenix group that had been trying for an expansion team.

No other objection surfaced among the owners. The NFL thus will have its third franchise shift in seven seasons.

“It’s been done,” said NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, an advocate of stability, when asked for his personal feelings. “Under the circumstances as presented today by the Cardinal case, I can only say I agree with the vote.”

This is the first NFL-approved move of the three. The others--the Oakland Raiders to Los Angeles and the Baltimore Colts to Indianapolis--were done despite league displeasure.

Coincidentally, the last team voted approval was . . .

The Chicago Cardinals, who moved to St. Louis in 1960.

Second banana in Chicago to the Bears, they became restive in St. Louis, where owner Bill Bidwill began complaining about 51,000-seat Busch Stadium.

“For 3 1/2 years, I said that all we wanted was a stadium of approximately 70,000 seats so we could compete with other teams,” Bidwill said Tuesday. “That’s all I really ever asked for.”

A 70,000-seat stadium, of course, could have held the Cardinals’ total attendance twice over in the last three seasons, in which they were 5-11, 4-11-1 and 7-8. Bidwill’s front office and notably personnel honcho George Boone have been derided in recent years for such No. 1 picks as quarterback Steve Pisarkiewicz from the University of Missouri, kicker Steve Little, also-ran linebacker Anthony Bell, wide receiver Clyde Duncan--who never caught a pass--and quarterback Kelly Stouffer, who has refused to sign.

One coach, Don Coryell, quit in the feud over the Pisarkiewicz draft. His successor, Bud Wilkinson, a strange choice since the Oklahoma legend was then 62, hadn’t ever coached in the pros and hadn’t coached anywhere in 15 years. He was fired two years later when he refused to play Pisarkiewicz over Jim Hart.

Bidwill was even asked Tuesday if he intends to bring Boone with him.

“Yes,” he said.

Did Bidwill feel he had let down his end of the bargain by not fielding better teams?

“Well, we had some pretty good teams in St. Louis,” he said. “In 1984, if we make a field goal on the very last play of the season, we win the division. We missed the field goal and were out of the playoffs. The team went downhill from there.”

Meanwhile, Bidwill began facing south, and east. Last October, he turned down a proposal for an open-air stadium in St. Louis and began talking with Baltimore and Phoenix.

In St. Louis, a group called Civic Progress put together a lucrative but apparently too-late counter-offer: a $20-million interest-free loan until a stadium was built, introduction of enabling legislation to build a 70,000-seat domed stadium, guaranteed sales of 65 sky boxes at $40,000 apiece, a $5-million practice facility and rent-free use of Busch Stadium until the new facility was built.

Civic Progress made a last-ditch presentation here Tuesday, offering to guarantee visiting clubs their share of the difference between the Busch Stadium capacity and a 70,000-seat sold-out stadium. If this was an attempt to buy the votes of Bidwill’s fellow owners, it didn’t work, but they did seem quite impressed by the spirit of the effort. Rozelle declared St. Louis a “very, very strong candidate for an expansion franchise.”

Bidwill’s team is now the Phoenix Cardinals and will play in Arizona State’s 70,000-seat stadium. There are proposals to build a downtown domed stadium, but that isn’t mandatory on Phoenix’s part.

Arizona State’s approval was secured when 55,000 Cardinal season tickets were made available to Sun Devil season ticket-holders. Several more thousand will go to former season ticket-holders for the old Arizona Outlaws of the defunct United States Football League.

Not surprisingly, there has already been an outcry in Arizona that most of the tickets have been allocated before the public could get its hands on its back pockets.

Also protesting to the end, and losing, was the group trying for the expansion franchise, represented by Foss and Bart Starr.

Said 51% owner Jim Stone: “I guess I own 51% of nothing.”

Bidwill, having chosen what he considered the sweetest of three sweetheart deals, stood up before a press conference Tuesday, looking not jubilant but nervous. A former water boy for his father’s Chicago Cardinals--”The first naughty word I learned was damn and the second was Bears and I learned them simultaneously”--he is almost timid in manner.

Did he have anything to say to the people of St. Louis?

“Yes, but I’m not quite composed enough now to say it. We are going to write our fans in St. Louis. We’ll explain our position and thank them for their support.”

What was this like, compared to the first move?

“Different. (Pause) Different.”

How did he feel?

“Mixed up. It’s an emotional thing. We were in St. Louis 28 years.”

By lease, the Cardinals are only obligated to Phoenix for 10, but Bidwill says not to worry.

“We have the ability to move out of here,” he said. “But if you think I’m going back in that room and ask for another vote, you’re out of your mind.

“We’re committed to Phoenix.”