|
:''"Baltimore Football Club" redirects here. For the former and current NFL franchises, see Indianapolis Colts and Baltimore Ravens, respectively.'' The Baltimore Stallions (known officially as the "Baltimore Football Club" and later as the "Baltimore CFL Colts" in its inaugural season) were a Canadian Football League team based in Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States, which played the 1994 and 1995 seasons. They were the most successful American team in the CFL's generally ill-fated southern expansion effort into the United States, and by at least one account, the winningest expansion team in North American professional sports history at the time.〔Symonds, William C. (December 3, 1995). (Canadian football is running out of plays ). ''"Bloomberg BusinessWeek"''. Retrieved August 13, 2013.〕 They had winning records in each season, won a division championship, and, in 1995, became the only American franchise ever to win the Grey Cup. Only a month after the Stallions' Grey Cup triumph, the state's Maryland Stadium Authority and the City of Baltimore announced that they had reached an agreement with Art Modell, the long-time owner of the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League, (NFL) to move his franchise to Baltimore for the 1996 season. Knowing they could not begin to compete with an overwhelmingly more popular brand in their home country, the Stallions relocated to Montreal as the third and current incarnation of the Montreal Alouettes. They are thus one of three Grey Cup champions in the modern era to subsequently fold (the others being the Ottawa Rough Riders and the original Alouettes). The CFL considers the Stallions to be a separate franchise from the Alouettes. ==History== For 30 years, Baltimore had been home to the Baltimore Colts, a popular NFL franchise that suddenly moved literally overnight to Indianapolis in 1984. Baltimore made two serious bids to get another NFL team. It heavily wooed the St. Louis Cardinals football team owned by the Bidwill family, but they ultimately moved to Phoenix, Arizona as the Phoenix (later Arizona) Cardinals. In 1993, an ownership group failed to win an NFL expansion franchise as a replacement ''(see Baltimore Bombers (proposed NFL team)''. Soon after the expansion effort failed, entrepreneur and former Washington Redskins assistant Jim Speros was granted a CFL expansion franchise for Baltimore that would play in Memorial Stadium, the Colts' old home. Attempting to capitalize on the city's love for its long-lost Colts, Speros adopted a color scheme that added silver to the Colts' traditional colors of blue and white, as well as a stylized horse's head logo. He also invited the old Baltimore Colts Marching Band, which had stayed together along with the old team's uniformed cheerleaders for over a decade, to play at his games and recruited the remaining Colts football fan clubs ("Colt Corrals") to follow and support the new CFL team. He initially called the team the "Baltimore CFL Colts." However, the NFL went to court and successfully obtained a legal injunction against the Stallions' use of any version of "Colts" in their name just hours before the team was to play its first game. Speros not only had to discard tons of purchased merchandise and souvenirs along with an advertising campaign, but also had to quickly change the team's official name to the "Baltimore Football Club" (which some just called the "Baltimore CFL's"). Local fans tended to continue referring to the team as the "Colts" anyway, and team officials tacitly encouraged this. For example, for most of the 1994 season, Memorial Stadium's public address announcer, Jack Taylor, would announce the team as "your Baltimore CFL..." – followed by a pause, during which time the crowd shouted "COLTS!" – after which he would conclude, "...football team."〔Steadman, John. (''From Colts to Ravens: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Baltimore Professional Football.'' )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Baltimore Stallions」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|