CARDINALS: Chambersburg's pro football team boasts decades of history

Jerell Jones wasted little time leaving for his summer home after his first year as athletic director at Baychester Middle School in the Bronx.

Just 24 hours after taking inventory of the school's equipment and jerseys, filling out end-of-the-year paperwork and returning his bathroom keys, Jones, 28, hopped into his 2011 Mercedes C300 with the bare essentials for living and embarked on a night drive to Chambersburg, where he plays wide receiver for the Cardinals three months out of the year.

"My goal as a player right now is I think I have some ability left and I don't want it to go to waste, so I'm donating my ability and my efforts to the Chambersburg Cardinals," said Jones, who started with the Cardinals in 2010.

It's not just fun and games for Jones and the Cardinals players.

The Chambersburg Cardinals is a professional football team and compensates its players. It is also a business currently operating in the red, with roughly $550,000 in outstanding loans, after two years as a pro team.

From amateur to pro

After the team suffered a six-year hiatus from 1995-2000, current Cardinals head coach Chad Fauson was instrumental in getting the group back on the field.

Fauson spent 1998-99 with the West Virginia Stars, a team he called "awful. Just pitiful.

"I chose them for that reason," he continued. "I wanted to get in with a startup (team), learn about the league, see how new teams start things and figure it out from there."

He brought his knowledge

back and helped reform the team, which was back on the field as the Cumberland Valley Cardinals in 2001, playing at Shippensburg Memorial Park.

The team was completely amateur, with players charged a $75 fee the first year to pay for league dues, field costs and to pay for uniforms, though Fauson said the fees didn't exactly cover the costs.

2001 was the last season the Cardinals charged their players to play.

"Charging guys wasn't really the way it was supposed to be," he said. "The Cardinals were never run that way. I was 20, 21 years old and really didn't know how it was going to go. But from Day 1, I had every intention of coming to Chambersburg. I knew they'd get a new stadium, I just didn't know it would take six years."

Cardinals director of business operations Russell Ruckman played for the team as an amateur as well during 2004 and 2005.

While attending Fort Hill High School in Cumberland, Md., Ruckman worked stocking shelves in the evening at County Market in La Vale, Md., during his sophomore through senior years.

After graduating, he bypassed college - "I'm not in the mindset to learn by conventional methods. Definitely, college was not for me," Ruckman said - and two years later started Vertex Worldwide Inc., which specializes in Rainbow Vacuum sales, supplies and repair.

He joined the Cardinals to get back to what he was too busy for in high school: playing football.

"My whole mentality (in high school) was to work," Ruckman said. "So I built my business. Once that got established, I was able to hire people and that allowed me to do something else besides work. I always wished I played football in high school, so that's kind of how that started."

Ruckman played without compensation. He compared the experience to playing on a church softball league.

After being around the organization, Ruckman started to notice aspects that could be improved and in 2007, when the team changed from Cumberland Valley to Chambersburg, he became involved on the business side.

Everywhere he looked, there were signs that outdoor football was ready to succeed professionally outside of the NFL.

NFL Europe went under in 2007. The Arena League soon followed, canceling its 2009 season.

With more talent on the market and nowhere for those players to go, the opportunity to turn the Cardinals pro seemed obvious.

Then Ruckman heard NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on the radio.

"He said he wanted to establish a farm system, so that was verbal confirmation of what we kind of were hearing," Ruckman said. "So we felt that Chambersburg, with its history and stuff like that, might be a good opportunity to expand upon an existing amateur team with the Cardinals and see where that goes."

Bringing players in

You could say Jones has experienced just about everything a football player could go through.

He played college football at Rhode Island, a Division I school. Professional football followed, though not in the National Football League. The Arena Football League, Canadian Football League, the American Indoor Football League, the German Football League - if you can think of a league, he's probably been there.

In 2010, after Jones' team won a championship in Germany, Fauson, the Cardinals' new head coach, starting bombarding his phone with messages. Fauson had seen tape of Jones on the Internet and knew he would be a perfect fit for the new professional team. It took many attempts to get Jones on the phone - Fauson said sometimes he'd just keep sending the same message every few days - but once he did it was an easy sell.

"Eventually I got him on the phone and once we started conversing, then that was pretty much it," said Fauson, who noted he prefers recruiting guys with some kind of playing experience after college and forming relationships with them, not agents. "There was no looking back from there."

Jones said, "When I sat down and spoke with Chad prior to coming to the Cardinals, there were certain things that were said that would happen when I came to Chambersburg. All those things have happened."

Jones was told he would have the opportunity to build up his resume with game tape, which would be sent to NFL scouts, and that he was coming to a team with a winning tradition where he would be able to contribute on the field.

Being a professional also meant compensation, though not necessarily completely in monetary form.

In addition to weekly payments that some players receive, those from out of town are offered housing. The team owns two five-bedroom houses in Chambersburg and is pursuing purchasing a third.

The Cardinals also have exchange deals with local businesses to provide services in return for advertising.

For instance, players are given memberships to the Chambersburg Fitness Center. They also receive gift certificates to various local restaurants.

"I think the Cardinals are a real standup organization compared to what I've seen," Jones said. "They take care of their business. They don't B.S. you in certain situations. I think they are very upfront. And I think they do handle themselves as a professional team."

The pairing has worked for Mike Trice, a hulking, bear-like offensive lineman.

Like Jones, Trice, who played collegiately at Hofstra, joined the team in 2010 with hopes to continue his playing career.

"I'm here for one thing: I'm just trying to play ball and to keep going," said Trice, who lives in a house with Jones, former Hofstra teammate Ottis Lewis and two others.

And his time with the Cardinals has helped him to new opportunities.

This past February he left Chambersburg for Colorado to play for the Indoor Football League's Colorado Ice.

With all his moving around, though, it's hard to find time to get home. It's been about a year and a half since he's spent any significant time, other than holidays, with his family.

"It's tough on you mentally. It's tough on you physically," he said. "You go through it, but at the end of the day I want what I want. I'm not going to stop until I get it."

Community leaders

Being a Cardinal involves more than showing up to practices and games.

They are members of the Chambersburg community and give their time at youth camps, visiting with various organizations and appearing at stores.

"We have helmets on, so you don't know the person who's on the field," Jones said. "What you do on the football field is not what you measure someone's personality by. It can be day and night from the football field and average daily living. So I think it's good to have those conversations with kids, parents and people in the community and then have them come to the game and see a completely different side of individuals when they're on the football field."

Said Ruckman, "It's amazing what the players and the Lady Cardinals (cheerleaders) can do, especially with the youth. The way they can connect - that's something very powerful that a standard individual cannot do. No matter how much they train or how much they read about it, they just cannot do that. So we know we have something special with our players and the Lady Cardinals that is very rare and to keep that to ourselves would be crazy." While the Cardinals give their time to the community, they are quick to say that the community gives to them, too.

Many players are from out of town, far from their families and in an entirely different world from what they know.

Lewis has a picture of Jones, Trice and him sitting on the bench at a game hanging in his bedroom that his first neighbor gave him. The caption: "The boys next door."

The players also receive offers to come to families' homes for dinners.

"It may be a small town, but these people make you feel at home," said Trice, who is from Hempstead, N.Y. "That's one of the biggest things. They make you feel good out here. I feel like some people are my family out here. It's like a family away from home; players and people in the community." Looking forward

The landscape of professional, minor league football is changing rapidly and there's no need to look further than the Lancaster Lightning.

A year ago, during the Cardinals' run to a Gridiron Developmental Football League championship, Chambersburg had little trouble with the Lightning, winning games of 70-7 and 56-0.

This year's meeting was different, a hold-your-breath, down-to-the-wire, 27-24 Cardinals win.

"It makes us certainly understand how much more we need to work to stay on top," Ruckman said. "That was a big eye opener. We thought we maybe had a couple more years of fine-tuning our stuff. But I think we're really going to have to ramp up a lot faster."

The possibility of a move has been brought to Ruckman's and the Cardinals' attention.

With Hagerstown, Md., hoping to build a new stadium for its minor league baseball team, the Suns, the city has approached the Cardinals about a move.

The Cardinals currently play at Trojan Stadium, which Ruckman says costs between $1,500 and $2,000 per game to rent.

As a young business, which is funded by three anonymous investors and is still making initial purchases, high field rentals can be a burden. This summer the Cardinals will reach $50,000 in rental fees since 2007.

"That's the tough part about it: We're still operating in the red," Ruckman said. "As of the end of 2011, we were spending more than we brought in because of buying houses and things like that."

Ruckman has big plans for the Cardinals.

He looks at teams like the York Revolution, a baseball team with no affiliation to Major League Baseball yet still plays in a multimillion-dollar facility, and thinks: Why not us?

Football is arguably the most popular spectator sport in the United States.

As a businessman, Ruckman has to at least listen to what Hagerstown's representatives have to say.

"We have to continuously look into the future because, if not, we're going to be champions now, then we're going to be at the bottom of the division quickly," Ruckman said. "It goes back to Lancaster. They showed us it's coming fast so we need to make sure we look at all different things to make sure we're competitive and able to survive. If you're not competitive and don't win, it can go down pretty quickly.

"So we're just a business willing to look at any and all opportunities available."

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Colin Stevens can be reached at cstevens@publicopinionnews.com and 262-4819, or on Twitter @ColinStevens06.

Professional team

The Chambersburg Cardinals consider themselves a "professional" football team. Here are the ways the team can compensate a player:

Money - some players receive a weekly stipend

Housing - the team owns two townhouses in which players live free of charge during the season

Motels - players can stay at motels on a discount

Food - players may receive gift cards and discounts for area restaurants

Training - players receive a membership to Chambersburg Fitness Center

Medical - the team has deals with physical therapists, a chiropractor and a dentist

History of winning

The Chambersburg Cardinals have built a tradition of winning since their inception in 1946.

1948 - team was 10-0-2 under coach "Bus" Peters in their second season

1954 - went 10-1-1 under coach Merle "Doggy" Leisher

1956 to 1966 - idle

1969 - was 11-4 and won Interstate Football League championship

1971 to 1974 - played in Seaboard Football League

1975 - idle

1976 - re-emerged in IFL

1977 to 1985 - won 9 straight IFL titles; had streak of 72 consecutive regular-season wins

1981 - won Pro Football Weekly National Championship over Chicago Lions

1991-92 - idle

1995-2000 - idle

2001 - came back as Cumberland Valley Cardinals

2010 - became "professional" team; won Big North East Football Federation title

2011 - went undefeated and won Gridiron Developmental Football League championship

Source: http://www.publicopiniononline.com/latestnews/ci_21076833/cardinals-chambersburgs-pro-football-team-boasts-decades-history?source=rss_viewed

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