Is the city of Baltimore no better than the Irsays?

My previous post now stands corrected.

 

Final year? Hell, about the last six years they were in Baltimore their attendance was abysmal even by the standards of the time. And while the Colts sucked some of those years (and had NO defense after '77), a few of those years, including '83 when they were in the AFC East race at least into November, they weren't bad enough to justify their shit attendance.

But Baltimore Colts fans are soooo put-upon. Boo-fucking-hoo. Robert Irsay was a dick and we won't go support him is the usual excuse for the shit attendance. Boo-fucking-hoo, plenty of cities have dick owners and the fans' loyalty goes beyond the owner to the point where they don't lose the team.

I thought the Colts were cool when they were in Baltimore too, but the incessant bitching and moaning by their fans ... 23 freaking years later, I might add, and the theft of the Browns trumps whatever sympathy I had.

 

Yabb,

One minor problem -- Tags wasn't commissioner when the Colts left Baltimore.

 

It's interesting how sports teams are treated differently than any other object we spend time and money on.

If a restaurant goes downhill in food and service, you leave.

If your Ford keeps breaking down, you go with Toyota.

But if your sports team's front office is either inept or simply concerned with making money and not putting the best product on the field . . . you stay with them or abandon them and (gasp!) risk being viewed as a "bad" fan.

As much as I have always liked the Colts, I can understand fans' frustration with Irsay in the early 1980s. It was a once-proud franchise turned upside-down with a dreadful owner. What's a fan to do?

As for myself, I didn't pick another team at the time. But I sure as heck lost enthusiasm for the franchise for a long time. The move. The Elway debacle. Frank Kush. Rod Dowhower. The way they treated Marchibroda. Not much to feel good about for a long time.

 

Substitute "Commissioner" for Tagliabue and you get the point

 

I just amuses me to no end that Baltimore fans continue to compare Irsay to Satan. Art Modell, on the other hand? Great guy.

 

They BOTH suck(ed) . . . for wildly-divergent reasons . . . but Suck City, just the same.

 

BT very aptly hit on what I was going to say in response to Buck, though I view it differently.

I understand that BT's feeling, Irsay was a bastard, but the Colts had six years of misery. That's it, six freaking years of losing. They were the AFC East head honchos as recently as 1977 when they moved. Before '72, they were a legit title contender in every season stretching back to the 50s. And if not for Ghost to the Post in '77, were as legit as any other AFC team that year to go to the Super Bowl.

That's not a long time of misery to abandon ship as much as Colts fans did in the late 70s and early 80s. Yes Irsay was a cocksmoker extraordinaire, probably the best real life model for the Cleveland Indians' owner from Major League, but that team was abandoned en masse beyond the pale of Irsay being a cocksucker.

The abandonment of the Baltimore fans made it easier for him to move when they didn't show up. Irsay is a big enough dick to have probably done it even if Colts fans had kept coming, but low attendance made it easier.

Remember the ground swell from both in and outside of Cleveland to make a wrong right by re-creating the Browns after '95? There was never anything like that kind of sentiment in '84 to do that for Baltimore, why would there be when 30,000 are showing?

And those with long memories and some historical acumen know this Baltimore phenomenon wasn't confined to the Colts. The Orioles were the poster children for the early 70s baseball attendance slump when they were having trouble busting 30,000 for playoff games. The Baltimore Bullets also abandoned ship, albeit for nearby Washington D.C.

As a Packers fan, I just can't accept that Colts fans were so put upon. My franchise was utter horseshit for a much longer period than the Colts were, with the proxies of the Pack's community ownership being as inept as Irsay was in both player personnel and business decisions. There just wasn't the evil face to put to it.

I'm aware that the Packers aren't a good comparison as far as the threat of moving the team is concerned, that was never in play like it was with Irsay. But it is a perfect example of how the fans reacted when their team went to shit.

The Colts and Packers 60s glory days go hand-in-hand -- their NFL Western Conference rivalry hitting its white-hot zenith in '65 when they tied for the conference title. But in the final balance when it all went to shit, one team's fan base kept coming, another didn't.

I feel sorry for the Colts fans who stuck with it, but I feel no sympathy at all for those who abandoned ship. It's the easy way out and it betrays nebulous loyalty.

And I'll make one other unrelated point. When the Milwaukee Braves were moved away from Milwaukee in the mid 60s, it was a bitter pill, but Milwaukee fans moved on not too long after they got the Brewers, who did nothing on the field until '78 to justify any loss of bitterness. There's rampant nostalgia for the Braves years, but nothing at all like the bitterness you hear even today from Baltimore fans ... 11 years after they got a team back!

 

It was unfortunate that Baltimore felt compelled to steal Cleveland's team. But it had no choice. Here's why:
The preferred means of acquiring an NFL team was expansion. In the early 1990s, Tagliabue, a former Redskins season-ticket holder, went to great lengths to protect his favorite team. How? He bypassed Baltimore, then the 28th-largest TV market, for 48th-ranked Jacksonville. If the fair decision had been made in expansion -- how many Jaguars fans do you know? -- Cleveland wouldn't have been raided.

 

And while trying to get a new stadium, he repeatedly made public statements that he would not move the organization.

 

Brook says, "Cheer up baby. But don't violate the restraining order."

 

To replace Municipal Stadium, built by public funds in 1953.

"We don't like the free stadium you already built for us; build us another."