Unitas
Limbo Teams: The Baltimore Colts, Part II
By Stephen Turk
In the ring of honor at the Baltimore Ravens stadium, are the names of all hall of fame Baltimore Colts. Having never played in Indianapolis or for the Ravens franchise, they are in team limbo, and belong to no one but the fans who loved them.
After 1954, firmly rooted in Baltimore, the Colts began their ascent toward greatness. The Baltimore Colts got good the way any team does. They had some smart drafting, some good trades, and a measure of luck. The team had a couple of solid holdovers from the Dallas Texans days, including future hall of famers Art Donovan and Gino Marchetti. In 1956 Lenny Moore, another future hall of famer, was drafted in the first round. A solid team was being built, but clearly the greatest move of all was acquiring Johnny Unitas.
Unitas had been cut by his native Pittsburgh after being picked in the ninth round, and was relegated to playing semi-pro ball before going to a tryout for the Baltimore Colts in 1956. He was signed, and played in the fourth game of the season when the starter went down. He was terrible. › Continue reading
A Match Made in the Airwaves Part II
By Stephen Turk
So it’s football season now, and that means all attention in the sports world goes there. I’m not complaining, I love football, but I don’t imagine that while watching the first nationally televised football game, too many people were downing hot wings, wearing replica jersey
s, or were able to see the game on a 160 inch high definition screen. But on December 28, 1958 those seeds were sown.
And that is really one of the most interesting things about that game that endures. What we can do now is look back at the timeline of professional football and pickout the moment things started to really come together.
The 1958 game has a lot going for it, especially in the whole “t.v. made the NFL what it is today” argument. There’s simply too much to talk about concerning the game itself, so we’ll skip the whole thing for now, and get to it at some point in the future. The take home point is that the game gave the country the very first NFL overtime in its first nationally televised game. The nation got to experience the excitement of sudden death together.
For decades the league had been trying to establish itself. What they needed was a medium, a grand stage to show that professional football could be just as enthralling as baseball, college football, and boxing. I mean, people wouldn’t go around painting themselves up as they do today if the product wasn’t worth it.