The NFL’s Oldest Rivalry

In the buildup to every Chicago Bears-Green Bay Packers game, the media and networks routinely promote the game as the NFL’s oldest rivalry. I cringe a bit when I hear that for one simple reason. Bears-Packers isn’t the league’s oldest rivalry. Today’s National Football League was the American Professional Football Association in 1920. There are only two teams playing today that were part of the great experiment that was organized professional football. Get this, neither one of those teams was the Green Bay Packers. The team was around but they were bopping about Wisconsin playing an unorganized professional schedule. The Packers were not part of the APFA/NFL in Year 1. The two teams playing in the league today that were playing in the league’s first year:

Chicago Cardinals

Decatur Staleys (Chicago Bears)

That’s it. No Packers. 

The NFL’s oldest teams started the league’s oldest rivalry on November 28, 1920.

Chicago Cardinals  7

Decatur Staleys      6

This was the Staleys only loss of the season and possibly kept the team from the new league’s first championship. I’m guessing that it was a loss that George Halas never forgot. The battle for Chicago was such a blast that the two teams played again the very next week.

Decatur Staleys     10

Chicago Cardinals  0

The Staleys finished that first season with a 10-1-2 record. They were nosed out for the league’s first title by the 8-0-3 Akron Pros. The Cardinals finished that first season with a 6-2-2 record. There were a lot of ties in those days. The Packers weren’t part of that first season of organized professional football fun. In 1920 they were doing their own thing in Green Bay. The funny thing about the Bears-Packers rivalry is that it isn’t even the league’s second oldest rivalry. That distinction belongs to the Packers and Cardinals. Those two teams played for the first time on November 20, 1921.

Green Bay Packers  3

Chicago Cardinals   3

The rivalry that so many proclaim as the league’s oldest got it’s start a week later on November 27, 1921.

Chicago Staleys      20

Green Bay Packers  0

The NFL’s oldest rivalry is the Bears-Cardinals rivalry. The NFL’s second-oldest rivalry is Cardinals-Packers. The NFL’s third-oldest rivalry is Bears-Packers. None of that plays well now because the Bears-Packers have such a terrific history. Combined, the two teams have 22 league titles. For nearly all of the first two decades of championship games, one of the two teams was playing in it. From 1929-46, the Packers and Bears each won six titles. 12 combined titles in 17 years. Simply said, the two teams ruled the league for a good chunk of the league’s history. It’s easy and fun to prop up the rivalry as something that it’s not and the media has been doing it for all of my life. It’s been cringe-worthy. Calling Bears-Packers the league’s most-contested rivalry, which it is, doesn’t have the zing of calling it the league’s oldest rivalry. It’s funny how things like facts are pushed aside in the name of zing. No one wants to call Bears-Packers the league’s third oldest rivalry. That has no zing. 

To be honest, it’s pathetic to call Bears-Packers something that it isn’t. 

The Bears-Cardinals rivalry, also known as the league’s oldest rivalry, lost a lot of sizzle when the Cardinals left Chicago for St. Louis in 1960. Throughout the 40 years that the two teams shared the city, the Battle for Chicago was a heated affair. The games were a highlight event. The Bears won more than they lost but it was rarely easy. Long-time Cardinals owner Charles Bidwill might’ve financially helped George Halas gain control of the Bears, on the field the two teams hated each other. The games played that way. They were legally and illegally brutal affairs. Bears-Packers might’ve decided titles but Bears-Cardinals were grudge matches. It’s actually a shame that the Bears and Cardinals are in different cities. A lot of pro football’s colorful history was lost when the two teams parted. The Cardinals have played outside of Chicago for so long that most fans don’t know that they once played there. Hell, many fans probably don’t know that they once played in St. Louis. 

Football historian Joe Ziemba has a book on the Bears-Cardinals rivalry coming out in the spring. That book will be a must-read for anyone curious about the league’s oldest rivalry.