1925 Chicago Cardinals – Milwaukee Badgers scandal
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| Date | December 10, 1925 | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Stadium | Normal Park, Chicago, Illinois | ||||||||||||||||||
The 1925 Chicago Cardinals–Milwaukee Badgers scandal was a scandal centered on a 1925 game between the Chicago Cardinals and the Milwaukee Badgers of the National Football League. The scandal involved a Chicago player, Art Folz, hiring a group of high school football players to play for the Milwaukee Badgers, against the Cardinals. This would ensure an inferior opponent for Chicago. The game was used to help prop up their win-loss percentage and as a chance of wresting the 1925 Championship away from the first place Pottsville Maroons.
In 1925, the Chicago Cardinals were in the running to win the NFL championship with the Pottsville Maroons. The Maroons had beaten the Cardinals 21-7 earlier in the season at Comiskey Park. This loss gave Pottsville a half game lead in the standings. However, the Cardinals felt that they could make up for the loss. Many professional football teams during the first decade of the NFL would schedule some easy extra games to pad their record and place in the standing. The Cardinals had hoped that the move would help bump the team to a first-place finish over Pottsville. Prior to 1933, the team with the best record in the standings at the end of the season was named the season's NFL Champions.
The two extra games were scheduled against the inferior Milwaukee Badgers and Hammond Pros, both of which were NFL members but had disbanded for the year. The Badgers, owned by Ambrose McGuirk, agreed to a game against the Cardinals. However, McGuirk lived in Chicago, which put him at a disadvantage in getting his team back together to play the Cardinals. Art Folz, a substitute quarterback for the Cardinals, convinced four players from Englewood High School, located in Chicago, into joining the Badgers for the game under assumed names, thereby ensuring that the Cardinals' opponent was not a pro caliber club. Folz himself was an Englewood High School graduate. Meanwhile, the Cardinals' owner, Chris O'Brien, unaware of the roster tampering, but still sensing a mismatch, didn't even charge attendance to the few scattered spectators who turned up for the December 10, 1925, game. However, the second game on December 12, against Hammond proved to be much closer in score with 13-0 Cardinals win over the Pros.
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