Jan. 18, 1951: The National Football League dissolves the Baltimore Colts due to financial weakness. The team had been successful in the old All-America Football Conference, but couldn’t compete after the AAFC merged with the NFL. Baltimore went two seasons without professional football, a harbinger of things to come. In 1952, the league decreed that pigskins would fly again in the city if the franchise could sell 15,000 season tickets in six weeks—a goal accomplished in less than five weeks. The next year, Carroll Rosenbloom moved the Dallas NFL team to Baltimore, adopted the Colts sobriquet and began a relatively successful, 31-year run. But in 1984, Robert Irsay—who had acquired the club from Rosenbloom in exchange for the Los Angeles Rams—engineered a midnight move to Indianapolis a day after the Maryland Legislature authorized the city of Baltimore to seize the team in a dispute over a new stadium. Baltimore clerics enjoyed another 12 years of football-free Sabbaths until Art Modell moved the financially troubled Cleveland Browns to Baltimore as the Ravens. That move took place in broad daylight.—Jeff Kanige
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