Jump to content

NFL franchise moves and mergers

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 50.10.90.15 (talk) at 13:00, 21 March 2013 (→Ultimate disposition of the 15 charter franchises). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Throughout the years, a number of teams in the National Football League (NFL) have either moved or merged.

In the early years, the NFL was not stable and teams moved frequently to survive, or were folded only to be resurrected in a different city with the same players and owners. The Great Depression era saw the movement of most surviving small-town NFL teams to the large cities to ensure survival. Franchise mergers were popular during World War II in response to the scarcity of players. Few of these relocations and mergers were accompanied with widespread controversy.

Franchise moves became far more controversial in the late 20th century when a vastly more popular NFL, free from financial instability, allowed many franchises to abandon long-held strongholds for perceived financially greener pastures. Despite a Pete Rozelle promise to Congress not to relocate franchises in return for a law exempting the league from certain aspects of antitrust laws, making possible the AFL-NFL merger, several franchises have relocated in the years since the merger and the passage of the law (Public Law 89-800) which sanctioned it.

While owners invariably cited financial difficulties as the primary factor in such moves, many fans bitterly disputed these contentions, especially in Baltimore, St. Louis, and Cleveland, each of which eventually received teams some years after their original franchises left. However, Los Angeles, the second-largest media market in the United States, has not had an NFL team since 1995 and the league is promoting an expansion there.[1] Another city that is often mentioned as a potential site for a moved franchise is Toronto, Ontario, the site of frequent speculation regarding a future franchise.

Additionally, with the increasing suburbanization of the U.S., the building of new stadiums and other team facilities in the suburbs instead of the central city became popular from the 1970s on, though at the turn of the 2000 millennium a reverse shift back to the central city became somewhat evident.

Timeline

Main article: National Football League franchise timeline

Teams making more significant moves, in chronological order

Quasi-moves: movement of more or less intact teams from one city to another

The NFL considers these separate franchises but there is significant continuity from one to the other

Franchise mergers

Teams moving between cities/boroughs within their metropolitan area, chronologically by team's first such move

Temporary moves, in chronological order

The following are not actually relocations, but temporary moves because these teams' home stadiums were either under construction or otherwise adversely affected:

Ultimate disposition of the 15 charter franchises

By the start of the 1920 APFA season, the nascent National Football League was composed of 15 franchises. Of those teams, only two are still in operation as of 2013 (denoted in bold):

The case of the Indianapolis Colts

The Indianapolis Colts have perhaps the most complex history of any football team in the NFL. The Colts can trace their history as far back as 1913, with the founding of the Dayton Triangles. The team then went through the following changes:[5]

  • Franchise became a road team in 1924, although it retained the "Dayton Triangles" name.
  • Franchise established a permanent home base in Brooklyn, New York and renamed Brooklyn Dodgers in 1930.
  • Changed name to Brooklyn Tigers in 1944. In the same year, the Boston Yanks are founded.
  • Merged with Boston Yanks in 1945 as the wartime "The Yanks."
  • Franchise canceled in 1945 by league and the team's temporary merger with the Boston Yanks is made permanent, as a parallel team (AAFC New York Yankees) is founded by the Tigers' former owner.
  • Boston Yanks moved to New York in 1949 and become New York Bulldogs. Renamed New York Yanks in 1950, absorbing much of the former AAFC New York Yankees' roster that year.
  • Team dissolved in 1951 and replaced by the Dallas Texans.
  • Texans, in turn, became a road team halfway through the 1952 season and were dissolved shortly thereafter; they are replaced by the second incarnation of the Baltimore Colts in 1953, which absorbed the team name of a previous Baltimore Colts franchise, as well as its marching band.
  • Baltimore Colts owner Carroll Rosenbloom and Los Angeles Rams owner Robert Irsay swap ownership of teams following the 1971 season. (Their heirs continued to own both franchises until 2010, when Rosenbloom's children sold the Rams to Stan Kroenke.) The Rams later move to St. Louis in 1995.
  • Baltimore Colts moved to Indianapolis in 1984 to become the Indianapolis Colts, which still play to this day. The marching band stays in Baltimore and associates itself with the Baltimore Ravens when they debut in 1996.

Officially, all of these teams except for the second Baltimore Colts and the Indianapolis Colts are considered separate franchises.[citation needed]

See also

References

  1. ^ The lukewarm attitude of Los Angelenos towards having an NFL franchise in such a large market has been an embarrassment to the otherwise successful league.Canadian expansion not on NFL radar
  2. ^ Willis, 2010, p. 323–325.
  3. ^ Peterson, 1997, p. 122.
  4. ^ McDonough, 1994, p. 50.
  5. ^ http://www.profootballresearchers.org/Coffin_Corner/17-05-621.pdf

Bibliography

  • Official 2005 National Football League Record and Fact Book. New York: Time Inc. Home Entertainment. (2005). ISBN 1-932994-36-X
  • Carroll, Bob; with Gershman, Michael, Neft, David, and Thorn, John (1999). Total Football:The Official Encyclopedia of the National Football League. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-270174-6
  • McDonough, Will (1994). 75 Seasons: The Complete Story of the National Football League. Atlanta: Turner Publishing, Inc. ISBN 1-57036-056-1
  • Peterson, Robert W. (1997). Pigskin: The Early Years of Pro Football. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507607-9
  • Willis, Chris (2010). The Man Who Built the National Football League: Joe F. Carr. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc. ISBN 978-0-8108-7669-9
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=NFL_franchise_moves_and_mergers&oldid=545977916"