Cardinals

The two clashes that shadow Arizona wherever it plays are the San Francisco 49ers and the Los Angeles Rams, and there is no title between the Cardinals and either rival to settle the argument one way, which keeps it running.

That absence of silverware sits oddly against a name older than the league itself. The franchise traces to Chicago, where it operated as the Morgan Athletic Club before the NFL existed, and it has never stopped fielding a team since. It signed on as a charter member of the NFL in 1920 as the Chicago Cardinals, then spent decades moving south and west: St. Louis from 1960, Phoenix from 1988, and only in 1994 did the current name, the Arizona Cardinals, appear on the jersey.

Two NFL Championships came early, in 1925 and 1947. The closer chance came much later and ended the harder way: Super Bowl XLIII, when Kurt Warner's team lost 27–23 to the Pittsburgh Steelers. Older ones remain, too: Larry Wilson and Ollie Matson among the Hall of Famers who wore the shirt before Arizona had ever seen it.

Long before any of that, in a Chicago neighbourhood in 1898, a group calling itself the Morgan Athletic Club took the field, and everything the Cardinals have become since traces back to that name.