Chet Bulger isn’t going to let being 91 years old stop him from celebrating America’s unofficial holiday Sunday.

“We’ve got three or four couples coming over. We’ll have a little spread, maybe some chili,” he said. “Matter of fact, nobody’s asked me to make the chili, yet.”

That is about all he hasn’t been asked the last two weeks. The phone in Bulger’s Virginia home has been ringing off the hook.

The Rumford native has been in high demand lately. He is one of five surviving members of the 1947 Chicago Cardinals, the last team in the franchise’s inept history to win a championship.

Media from all over the country have been calling him to talk about that team, or the 1948 championship game that the Cardinals lost, 7-0, to the Philadelphia Eagles, or the 1944 season, when the Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steelers merged and went 0-10.

Not that one winless season would have changed anything, but Bulger doesn’t have any mixed feelings about Sunday’s Super Bowl. He’s always bled Cardinal red, from the day they drafted him in 1942 on through their relocations to St. Louis and Arizona.

In 1946, Chicago Bears owner and coach George Halas offered $20,000 for Bulger’s contract. Cardinals owner Charles Bidwill, father of current owner Bill Bidwill, told Chet he would split the money with him if he’d agree to go to the cross-town rivals.

“I said, ‘No, I’ll go back to Maine.’ I didn’t want to play for anybody but the Cardinals,” he said. “I liked George as a person, but I didn’t want him as a boss. His players used to tell me he threw nickels around like they were manhole covers.”

Bulger wasn’t in football for the money. Nobody was back in the 1940s. Pro football still played second fiddle to the college game in those days. The Cardinals sometimes played in front of smaller crowds than the ones Bulger played in front of at Stephens High School in Rumford.

Football rules at Mountain Valley now, but it was big in the River Valley back then, too. Elizabeth Bulger, Chet’s mother, loved it as much as anyone.

When he was a sophomore, Chet played a game against South Portland with crushed ribs. The doctor told him the next day he was done playing for the season. His mother told him he wasn’t.

“My mother made me go back up and change into my practice clothes and I went on the football field and the coach said, ‘You can’t play ball with busted ribs,'” a laughing Bulger said.

His mother was Stephens’ biggest fan. If she thought the Panthers got short-changed by the officials, she’d call the school superintendent the next day and let him know about it. She was also Rumford’s biggest New York Football Giants fan. She once called her son at midnight to complain how dirty the Chicago Bears had been to her beloved team earlier that day.

Bulger hadn’t given much thought to football after high school. His track coach at Stephens got him a track scholarship to Auburn University. He walked on for football.

He didn’t think he’d play beyond college until the Cardinals sent him a letter after graduation telling him he was now their property.

He started out as a right tackle, but when the Cardinals drafted University of Georgia superstar Charley Trippi in 1947, they moved Bulger to left tackle, Trippi’s side. They scored 45 points in their first game, against the Detroit Lions (some things never change) and rolled to the championship from there against the Eagles, 28-21. The 6-foot-3, 260-pound Bulger, an All-Pro that season, helped spring Trippi for a 44-yard touchdown run and Elmer Angsman on two 70-yard TD runs.

The Cards were even better the next year, averaging 33-points per game, but Philly got its revenge, taking advantage of a snow-covered field to win the championship, 7-0.

Bulger calls it the one that got away.

“It’s like the big walleye I lost up in Canada. I’ll never forget it. It was the biggest one I ever saw. I had a cheap reel on it. It ended up in the bottom of the lake,” he said.

Mainers might consider Bulger the one that got away. After one year with the Lions, he retired in 1951 and returned to Chicago, where he became a teacher at De La Salle Institute. He taught and coached there for more than 30 years. In 2007, the school honored his contributions by naming its main athletic field after him.

He now lives in Virginia, but his heart still belongs to Rumford, though, and he has a soft spot for Falcon football. He’s heard of the exploits of Fitzpatrick Trophy finalist Justin Staires from family back home. He sent quarterback Cam Kaubris, a cousin, John Wooden’s book “Pyramid of Success.”

“Just give a kind word to the people of Rumford for me. I’m so proud to have played for that high school,” he said. “To this day, I believe all of my success rested with the coaches I had there.”

Bulger’s former players feel the same way about him. One, now a millionaire, offered to fly Bulger and his four surviving teammates from that last title team to Tampa for this week’s game. Bulger was battling the flu and wasn’t up for flying, but the grateful pupil persisted.

“His wife wanted to rent John Madden’s bus just for the five of us. That would have been a really good deal,” he said. “This gal was determined.”

But Chet Bulger will stay home Sunday, enjoy the company of friends, some home-made chili and root for his Cardinals. Rumford will probably be rooting with him.

Randy Whitehouse is a staff writer who can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]