Arizona Cardinals

The Arizona Cardinals are a professional football team that plays in the West Division of the National Football Conference.

In 2009, the Cardinals played in their first Super Bowl, falling 27-23 to the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLIII.

Prior to the 2008 season, the Arizona Cardinals had only one playoff win in franchise history. After finishing the 2008 season with a 9-7, the Cardinals won the NFC West and qualified for the playoffs. The Cardinals defeated the Atlanta Falcons, Carolina Panthers and Philadelphia Eagles, qualifying them to play in Super Bowl XLIII. The Cardinals lost the Super Bowl to the AFC Champion Pittsburgh Steelers 27-23 on February 1, 2009.

Founded in 1898, the Cardinals are a charter member of the NFL and hold the distinction of being the oldest continuously run American football franchise in the nation.

The team originated as a neighborhood group that played under the name, Morgan Athletic Club in the Chicago's South Side.

Chris O'Brien bought the team and moved its games to Normal Field and called the team "the Normals." In 1901, Smith moved bout some faded uniforms from the University of Chicago that were faded maroon, and Smith reportedly declared, "That's not maroon, it's cardinal red." Out of that phrase, the franchise's nickname was born.

The team was known as the Racine Cardinals when it joined the American Professional football league, a forerunner to the NFL. It moved to Chicago in 1922 when another team from Racine, Wisconsin, entered the league.

The franchise relocated to St. Louis for the 1960 season. The franchise again relocated in 1988 and called themselves the Phoenix Cardinals, until rebranding themselves as the Arizona Cardinals in 1994.http://www.azcardinals.com/history/franchise.html

The Arizona Cardinals, a franchise that had one exactly one playoff game in its history, reeled off three postseason victories and was two minutes away from winning Super Bowl XLIII until the Pittsburgh Steelers mounted a last-minute game-winning drive to steal the title 27-23.

• Kurt Warner
• Edgerrin James
• Larry Fitzgerald
• Anquan Boldin
• Jackie Smith
• Pat Tillman
• Jake Plummer
• Jerame Tuman
• Bryan Robinson
• Darnell Dockett
• Levi Brown
• Ben Graham