Posted on 03/27/2017 11:48:55 AM PDT by C19fan
bump
ff
vegas will find out it made a $900M mistake and will never get their money back. oakland, in the meantime, is still stuck with a huge bill from last renovation. that’s how the davis’ operate.
Yes, and isn't it interesting that today, there are teams named the Texans and Titans? (One, in fact, replaced the other.)
“Yes, and isn’t it interesting that today, there are teams named the Texans and Titans? (One, in fact, replaced the other.)”
Yep, the Oilers moved to TN and became the Titans which left Houston without a team so the league created a franchise and the Texans were reborn.
And when Paul Brown was let go (or forced out) at Cleveland he traveled a bit south and founded the Bengals, even using the Browns colors for the new team.
Sports trivia can be so much fun.
FWIW I think the Colts should have been forced to leave the name in Baltimore to be picked up by the new team.
I still can’t get used to the Indianapolis Colts or Baltimore Ravens.
I think warm weather teams should be allowed to have home games in the blazing sun. The cold weather teams are allowed to have games in sub-zero temperatures. It is called home-field advantage.
I agree with you. I thought the last several super bowls, especially last season’s, looked fake/rigged.
You can bet on NFL games in LV.
The players don’t really have to be in on it; although I suspect most of the elite qbs are. All it takes is a ref to keep a drive going, or end it. For bottom feeding teams, I think they will let them battle it out.
I wondered what Matt Ryan was doing, when he had his team in field goal range, in position to put the game away, and he was still throwing what looked like wild errant passes. Well, penalty . . . out of field goal range, pats get the ball back to score the game tying touchdown.
The Ravens are teh old Cleveland Browns, who were replaced by Browns II.
The Ravens got a sweetheart deal from the taxpayers of Maryland — I guess it was a payoff from Parris Glendening for Baltimore’s help in stealing his election.
But the Colts should never have been allowed to leave, nor should the Senators have been allowed to leave DC.
BTW, the Orioles are the former St. Louis Browns. if you value your team, don’t call it Browns, or Baltimore will steal it.
Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams created the AFL because the NFL wouldn’t give them franchises.
“But the Colts should never have been allowed to leave, nor should the Senators have been allowed to leave DC.”
Strange how the Senators deal worked out.
In 1956 Los Angeles officials went to the world series to try to get the Senators to relocate to LA.
The Senators ended up going to Minnesota as the Twins and both the Dodgers and Giants relocated to California, keeping their rivalry alive.
If NYC had played ball with O’Malley the Dodgers would have stayed in NYC but the city planner wasn’t a sports fan and wouldn’t use imminent domain to give O’Malley land at below market cost. He did offer the property that eventually became Shea stadium but at market value.
Both my dad and granddad were lifelong Dodgers fans. When the team moved to LA they both refused to follow the LA version of the team.
They refused to even read Dodgers box scores in the paper.
O’Malley was second only to Judas on the Betrayers list.
The AFL actually ended up being a good deal for the NFL.
The AFL opened up the game, increased scoring and broadened the appeal of football.
Al Davis was the AFL commissioner who was negotiating with the NFL. Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams went behind Davis’s back to make a deal with the NFL.
Davis wanted all AFL teams accepted by the NFL and was willing to wait another year to make it happen.
Hunt and Adams wanted an immediate deal and bowed to the NFL demand that only certain teams would be accepted.
That was the beginning of the bad blood between Davis and Hunt and the Raiders and Chiefs.
All the AFL teams got in, plus the Colts, Browns, and Steelers moved over from the old NFL (which had 16 teams in 4 divisions) to the new AFC (which had 10 teams) to even things out. Nobody was left out.
Robert Moses wanted to build the Dodgers a stadium at Flushing Meadow in Queens (where Shea Stadium would eventually get built, and then Citi Field), but Walter O’Malley said, “Then they wouldn’t be the Brooklyn Dodgers, would they?”
O’Malley wanted a place near Atlantic and Flatbush, at Atlantic Yards, an old railyard. Moses told him that was not a fit place for a stadium. O’Malley took the Los Angeles offer to build a ballpark in Chavez Ravine (it’s still there — Dodger Stadium, the second oldest ballpark in the National League) and after a four-year absence of National League baseball from New York, the Mets were born (owned by Joan Payson, the only Giants stockholder to vote against moving them.)
(They used Dodger blue, with the Giants’ orange script crossed NY on it, then said they were just using the colors of the City of New York. Right, and you didn’t steal those pinstripes from the Yankees either.)
The expansion that created the Mets, Colt .45s (now Astros), Angels, and Senators II was forced by the Continental League. (BTW, O’Malley tried to stop the AL from going to LA, but the Yankees threatened to keep the NL out of New York if that happened.)
After a couple of years at the Polo Grounds, the Mets moved to Shea Stadium — at the Flushing Meadows site Moses wanted the Dodgers to take.
Oh, and the Brooklyn site that O’Malley wanted? it’s now the location of the Barclays Center, home of the Brooklyn Nets.
All that’s left of the Polo Grounds is a stairway. But in another irony, when peter Magowan, an old Giants fan from New York, bought the San Francisco Giants, he approached Ralph Lauren to be the corporate sponsor of his ballpark. Lauren turned him down, unfortunately. he wanted to name the place after Lauren’s “Polo” brand — the Polo Grounds.
You know the real reason Calvin Griffith relocated the Senators to Minnesota? He owned Griffith Stadium; at DC Stadium he would have been a tenant.
He was offered a location in Virginia, near Routes 7 and 123. Calvin said nobody would go out there; it’s way out in the country.
Today, that location is known as Tysons Corner — one of the biggest shopping complexes in the DC area. it’s owned by the Lerner family — who, as it happens, also own the Washington nationals.
Yeah, I screwed that up.
Don’t know what I was thinking, must have had a brain spasm about then.
When he was negotiating with the NFL Davis was holding out for something, can’t remember what it was, but he was plenty PO’ed when Hunt and Adams contacted the NFL on their own.
It may have been something for the players.
I saw a show about the merger maybe 15 years ago and did some research and confirmed what was on the show, but I now have no idea what it was.
I hear Alameda County is trying to find a way to kick the Raiders out. The lease isn’t up for 2 more years and the Vegas stadium won’t be ready before then anyway, so teh Raiders intend to stay in Oakland until then, but the politicians want to expel them.
The irony is that before the merger, the NFL had four divisions of four teams each. Now each conference has four divisions of four teams each. Until the Chargers moved, you had three of teh eight divisions that were historic pre-merger alignments:
Dallas, New York, Philadelphia, Washington
Chicago, Detroit, Green Bay, Minnesota
Denver, kansas City, Oakland, San Diego.
The Chargers move to LA and now the Raiders move to Vegas kind of screwed that up.
When the NBA and ABA merged, only four ABA teams — the New York (later New Jersey, now Brooklyn) Nets, the Indiana Pacers, the San Antonio Spurs, and the Denver Nuggets — got to join the NBA — much to the consternation of the Carolina Cougars and especially the Kentucky Colonels, who thought they ought to be included. (The Colonels, at least, were right.)
Several ABA owners got screwed.
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