EDITOR'S NOTE
Who are the people who own the teams that compete in the NFL, and strive each year to make it to the Super Bowl? What kinds of people are they? Are they all rich? Are they all self-made? Do they own teams because they love the sport, or because the teams are good investments? The Times assigned staff writers Bob Oates and Earl Gustkey to research and write about the NFL owners with these, and other, questions in mind. Their stories appear in the adjoining columns. Oates writes about the AFC's owners, Gustkey the NFC's.
BILL BIDWILL, St. Louis Cardinals
One of the National Football League rumors that won't go away has the St. Louis Cardinals moving to Phoenix.
The team's owner, Bill Bidwill, a shy, low-profile man in a high-profile business, won't confirm or deny that the Cardinals' days in St. Louis are numbered.
"All I've ever said is that we can't compete in the NFL playing in a stadium that size," he said recently. "The income differential with the other teams is just too much."
The Cardinals play in 51,000-seat Busch Stadium, the second-smallest facility, behind the Astrodome, in the NFL. Last season, they sold 32,000 season tickets. Phoenix has offered Arizona State University's 73,000-seat Sun Devil Stadium in nearby Tempe, where, Arizonans promise, the Cardinals could probably sell 70,000 season tickets in their first year.
However, the taciturn Bidwill, called the Big Red Chief in St. Louis, offers few hints on how he's leaning.
"We've talked to him numerous times, and the strongest comment we've ever gotten out of him was 'never say never,' and 'you never know,' reports Bob Jacobsen, sports editor of the Arizona Republic in Phoenix.
On one of Bidwill's visits to Phoenix--he was meeting with some municipal politicians--an Arizona Republic columnist, Bob Hurt, learned that Bidwill's wife, Nancy, was house hunting in Phoenix.
Meanwhile, back in St. Louis, city and county politicians continue to talk about possible domed stadium projects in Maryland Heights or downtown, as part of a convention center facility.
Bidwill, 55, is an owner in the old-school tradition of Halas, Mara and Rooney. He's not a millionaire's son and he didn't make millions in oil, cars or condos and buy a football team as a toy. The Cardinals are his life. He owns the football team that his father bought in 1932 for $50,000, when the team was in Chicago, running a poor second to the Bears in the affections of the fans.
Working for the Cardinals--he started as a water boy on game days in the 1930s--and later owning them is all Bill Bidwill has ever done for a living.
"He's a real working owner," a Cardinal front office man said. "He's here every day."
Charles Bidwill, Bill's father, bought the Cardinals the year Bill was born. The Cardinals had generally dismal seasons, until their "dream backfield" of Paul Christman, Marshall Goldberg, Pat Harder and Charley Trippi took them to an NFL championship in 1947. For the Bidwill family, however, it was a bittersweet victory. Charles Bidwill had died suddenly in April of that year and didn't see his team win a title.
Ownership of the Cardinals passed to Bidwill's mother, Violet. When the franchise was moved to St. Louis in 1960, one Bidwill son, Charles, Jr., better known as Stormy, stayed behind in Chicago, to run the family's race tracks. In 1962, the Bidwills' mother died, and an event occurred soon thereafter that shook both men profoundly.
Walter Wolfner, Violet Bidwill's second husband, challenged her will bequeathing the Cardinals and a large part of her estate to her sons. Wolfner claimed that both Bill and Stormy had been illegally adopted and were therefore not entitled to the estate.
It was a bombshell. Neither Bidwill had ever been told he had been adopted. They spent a year in court, proving their adoptions were legal.
When writer Kim Plummer of the St. Louis Globe Democrat asked him about it last June, Bidwill would say only: "That was a long time ago."
Always in a bow tie, Bidwill is an introspective man, rarely photographed while smiling. His favorite topics, other than the Cardinals, are Georgetown basketball--he's a graduate--naval military history and Italian food. He gets his sports news from a United Press International sports wire in his office.
A quirk: Unlike most executives, he makes most of his own phone calls. "It's not the New York way, but it's the way I do it," he explained. "It saves time, and I think people appreciate it." NORMAN BRAMAN, Philadelphia Eagles
In the 1940s, at the Philadelphia Eagles' training camp at West Chester, Pa., coaches, trainers, equipment men and other team officials had an awful time chasing off a skinny, persistent young man who showed up often, volunteering to carry the water buckets.
Sometimes he asked for autographs. Sometimes he asked to do odd jobs. But mostly he just hung around.
