Limbo Teams: The Baltimore Colts, Part I
By Stephen Turk
What is a team in limbo? When a team goes defunct, either through moving or folding entirely, the former team is gone for all intents and purposes. But when considering the historical value of a defunct team, there is a whole story there. There are front office decisions for a team that doesn’t exist any more, there are records set and statistics recorded for a nonexistent entity, there are photos of a team that doesn’t play anymore. It’s in this way that a team becomes a limbo team; a team that exists in memories and stats, but not in the present day.
I’ll start this off by talking about a limbo team close to my own heart, the Baltimore Colts. The brand of limbo team they represent is the relocated franchise. When a franchise relocates, sometimes they change their team name and logos, thus forging a separate identity, and sometimes they don’t. When the Baltimore Colts were moved to Indianapolis in 1984, they kept the team name, colors, logos, and everything else associated with the franchise.
And so the Baltimore Colts are like a story book, with a beginning, a climax, and an ending, true for any limbo team that is forging no new ground.
The move to Indy profoundly hurt a lot of the rabid fans in Baltimore. It should be noted, however, that Baltimore has seen plenty of displaced teams come to town. Indeed, in the earlier days of professional football, teams moved around all the time. A long line of failed teams landed in Baltimore in 1947 and was named the Colts, as per the results of a fan contest. The team was terrible, wore green and silver uniforms(!), and folded after the 1950 season.
The team was beloved by its hometown fans, however, as Baltimore had no other major sports team at the time. Baltimore was a blue collar city with an inferiority complex due to its proximity to the more glamorous burgs of Washington D.C. and Philadelphia, a mentality, it could be argued, that the city still holds today. Certainly the rats aren’t getting any smaller. In any event, attendance was high and the team had a lot of support, including its own marching band, one of the only in the league, that paid its own way on road trips.
The first Colts incarnation folded, but in 1953, Baltimore Football returned when Carroll Rosenbloom bought the failed Dallas Texans, fulfilling the promise of Commissioner Bert Bell, that Baltimore would get a team. Everything returned, the fans, the marching band, and the losing.
That’s the begining of the story, the good part was yet to come.
Note: Logo and helmet from: http://chriscreamer.com/index.php
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