The Chambersburg Cardinals are an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

team based in

Chambersburg, Pennsylvania Chambersburg is a borough in and the county seat of Franklin County, in the South Central region of Pennsylvania, United States. It is in the Cumberland Valley, which is part of the Great Appalachian Valley, and north of Maryland and the ...

. The team plays in the

Gridiron Developmental Football League The Gridiron Developmental Football League (GDFL) is a low-level american football minor league based in Memphis, Tennessee, using the franchise model. , the league has 63 teams. The GDFL plays a playoff format similar to NCAA tournament, as 16 ...

(GDFL).

Founding

The team was founded in 1946 by local players returning from

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. In 1956, the team disbanded due to difficulty scheduling quality teams. The Cardinals would not field another team until 1968. The second incarnation of the Cardinals entered the Interstate Football League as an expansion team in 1968. They played in the IFL until 1971 when a portion of the IFL, including Chambersburg, merged with the Mason-Dixon Football League to become the

Seaboard Football League The Seaboard Football League was an American football minor league that operated from 1971 to 1974.Bob Gill, with Steve Brainerd and Tod Maher, ''Minor League Football, 1960-85'' (McFarland and Co., 2002), pp84, 99-100 It folded during the 1974 ...

—A league that held, among other teams, the Hartford Knights, Long Island Chiefs and New England Colonials, who were, or would move to, the

Atlantic Coast Football League The Atlantic Coast Football League (ACFL) was a professional american football minor league that operated from 1962 to 1973. Until 1969, many of its franchises had working agreements with NFL and AFL teams to serve as farm clubs. The league paid ...

in 1973. They went on to win the league crown in 1973 (when some of the better teams left for the ACFL) before the team and league folded midseason in 1974.Bob Gill, with Steve Brainerd and Tod Maher, ''Minor League Football, 1960-85'' (McFarland and Co., 2002), pp84, 99-100

King Corcoran James Sean Patrick "King" Corcoran (July 6, 1943 – June 19, 2009) was an American football quarterback who had a ten-year career as a journeyman in the Atlantic Coast Football League, Seaboard Football League, Midwest Football League, World Fo ...

played for the Cardinals in 1972, after the Cardinals offered him a starting job. Corcoran had played for the

Montreal Alouettes The Montreal Alouettes (French: Les Alouettes de Montréal) are a professional Canadian football team based in Montreal, Quebec. Founded in 1946, the team has folded and been revived twice. The Alouettes compete in the East Division of the Canad ...

but refused to take a job as a backup. The team had four different quarterbacks start that year and it was Jim Haynie that started in the championship game. Corcoran left for the

Philadelphia Bell The Philadelphia Bell was a franchise in the World Football League, which operated in 1974 and a portion of a season in 1975. The Bell played their home games in 1974 at JFK Stadium in South Philadelphia. The team logo was a representation of th ...

of the World Football League in 1974.

1977-1984: Championship Era

Between 1977 and 1984, the Cardinals won 72 straight regular season games, including five

perfect season A perfect season is a sports season, including any requisite playoff portion, in which a team remains and finishes undefeated and untied. The feat is extremely rare at the professional level of any team sport, and has occurred more commonly at the ...

s, a record for non-collegiate football, although there is record of at least one loss in that time frame, to the Racine Gladiators in the 1981 Minor Professional Football Association championship.

2006: AIFL

In 2006, after a reorganization of the

American Indoor Football League American Indoor Football (AIF) was a professional indoor football league, one of the several regional professional indoor football leagues in North America. The AIFL began as a regional league with six franchises on the East Coast of the United ...

that saw the departure of the Syracuse Soldiers, the Cardinals were asked to fill two holes in the schedule. In their first game against the nearby

Johnstown Riverhawks The Johnstown Riverhawks was a professional indoor American football team based out of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. They were a charter member of the American Indoor Football Association (AIFA). They played their home games at Cambria County War Mem ...

, the Cardinals lost by a score of 68–0, billed as the first shutout in AIFL history, although, since it was an AIFL team against a non-AIFL team, that would not be a fair comparison. Their second game against league powerhouse Reading Express had a similar result, a 74-0 loss. The AIFL declared that all records set against the Cardinals and the Ghostchasers, a team hastily established to fill the schedule of another team, the

Carolina Ghostriders The Carolina Ghostriders were an indoor football team and charter member of the American Indoor Football League. History Formed in 2005, they were originally named the Carolina Sharks and played their home games at the Cricket Arena in Charlotte ...

(which, in turn, had been hastily assembled to fill the schedule of yet another team the year before), would be marked with an asterisk.AIFL preserving integrity of records
" AIFL press release (June 2006). Page no longer online.

2010-Present: GDFL

In 2010, the Cardinals joined the

and won the league title in 2011.

References

External links

*http://www.chambersburgcardinals.com/history.html Chambersburg, Pennsylvania North American Football League teams American football teams established in 1946 1946 establishments in Pennsylvania Semi-professional American football American football teams in Pennsylvania