Colts Heading to Los Angeles ?

Did anybody catch the blurb on ESPN's NFL GAMEDAY last night (?) from NFL Guru Chris Mortenson? He said that the Colts C-O-U-L-D be moving to Los Angeles next year . . .


Indy Fishwrap Report on Colts Heading to Los Angeles


WTHR.com Story on Possible Move


Now check this out; Back in the 1970's, the owners of the then LA Rams (Robert Irsay) and Baltimore Colts (Carrol Rossenbloom) swapped teams. Mr. Rossenbloom was mysteriously killed back in 1978(or 79?) where then his wife, Georgia Frontiere, took over the team. She then moved the Rams from the LA Coliseum down to Anaheim in 1980 (?) and then to St. Louis in 1995. Bob Irsay then took his colts to Indianapolis in 1984. Wouldn't it be ironic if the Colts ended up in the town where their late previous owner use to have a team at? I think Los Angeles can support 1 team (placing 2 teams there eventually killed the market) but they would have to build a new stadium for trying to renvoate the Coliseum again, which I hear is in a really bad part of LA . . .

 

Hmm...I was like two or three when it happened. Did Georgia Frontiere do a little Courtney Love action on her husband? I'd never heard about the swap. That's really, really strange. The Rams started to suck a few years after he died. The Colts sucked for the greater part of this whole Indianapolis thing. Other than for the sheer ability to put a team out in a space where there isn't much football (up to Chicago, and at the time no Titans or St. Louis), I never saw why the Colts were allowed to move.

 

i actually heard this rumor about the jaguars.

 

You mean the Jags were thinking about moving to LA ? Damn, they've only been there for about 7 years now . . Is Wayne Weaver realizing that JAX may be too small of a market to make any money in ? If that was the case, the NFL should've put that 2nd team in Baltimore or St. Louis instead . . .

 

Colts move to Indy because Irsay couldn't get a new stadium from the state of Maryland/City of Baltimore. Since the NFL doesn't have an anti trust exemption (i.e. they can prevent teams from moving like MLB can . . see 1993 when the Giants were prevented from moving to Tampa Bay) the league couldn't do anything to stop them . . .

 

the colts literally moved in the middle of the night with a fleet of moving trucks.

i think the lease at the hoosier dome ends after this season. nfl wants a team in la, and if the colts move the league doesn't have to turn to al davis and attempt to lure him back to la.

quite a saga...team swapping from one side of the country to the other, with a detour in cleveland along in the way.

 

Bump . . . Here's an article from Chris Mortenson (ESPN.com) with more info on the Colts possibly bolting to Los Angeles next year. I didn't realize that the city of Indianapolis pays millions of dollars to the Colts each season (the figure could reach $10 million by 2004). I would think Indy is a big enough market where they could support 2 teams without a sweat. Apparently even having 36,000+ season tix holders isn't enough for the team to generate enough revenue to survive there . . .


Chris Mortensen's Report on the Colts Cash Flow Problems in Indy