Colts-Ravens game opens old woundsThis game will undoubtedly have some significance for the aged, and it will be about more than just a trip to the AFC Championship game.
It will be about revenge.
When the Indianapolis Colts (13-4) face the Baltimore Ravens (13-3) on Saturday in a divisional playoff game, it will rekindle memories of years gone by, of players such as Johnny Unitas and Raymond Berry and “The Greatest Game Ever Played,” not to mention a snowy night, March 29, 1984, when a few hours and a couple of Mayflower moving trucks were all that was needed to change football history.
“I know when I came here, it took awhile for me to truly appreciate the depth of emotion that (night) taps into around here, and it’s very real, tangible,” Ravens coach Brian Billick said. “So our players are (cognizant) in the sense that they can’t go to the grocery store, they can’t turn on the radio, they can’t go pick up their cleaning, without getting some type of inkling of it.”
The Colts spent the greater part of 40 years calling Baltimore home. That’s where they will play Saturday.
The Baltimore Colts were first a member of the All-American Football Conference from 1947 to 1949 and part of the merger with the NFL in 1950 before dissolving because of financial reasons.
After two seasons with no football, a group led by Carroll Rosenbloom got Baltimore the remains of the Dallas Texans franchise.
The Colts won the 1958 NFL championship 23-17 over the New York Giants in the “Greatest Game Ever Played,” coined because it was televised nationally, a rarity for the era, and because it was the first NFL game to go into sudden-death overtime.
The Colts defeated the Giants for another championship in 1959. With Don Shula coaching, they were upset in the 1969 Super Bowl by the New York Jets, the first AFL team to win the three-year-old title game. But under Don McCafferty, they defeated the Dallas Cowboys 16-13 for the Super Bowl championship in 1971.
In 1972, Robert Irsay acquired the Colts from Rosenbloom, in exchange for the Los Angeles Rams, and it was Irsay who eventually moved the franchise, so rich in history with the likes of John Mackey, Lenny Moore and Gino Marchetti, with a middle-of-the-night cloak-and-dagger exodus from Baltimore.
Why is this significant today?
Baltimore was heartbroken, didn’t get another team until 1996 – it came from Cleveland, where the fans became equally flummoxed – and the Ravens and Colts, still owned by the Irsay family, have met only six times since.
For fans in Baltimore, seeing the horseshoe logo still conjures up conflicted feelings, even if many of the players in the locker rooms have no feelings at all about the history of it, and even if it all really doesn’t have the same effect in Indianapolis.
“I know it’s not for the people in Indianapolis,” Billick said. “And I know it’s not for the players necessarily. Obviously, we’ve got some guys on this team who weren’t even born when that all happened.”
Colts coach Tony Dungy made similar statements and his players have, for the most part, been unenthusiastic with the historical significance of the first playoff meeting between Baltimore and Indianapolis.
“It’s not really a factor for me at all,” Colts center Jeff Saturday said. “What we’ve done in Indy has been pretty spectacular. It’s a great city, and I love playing here. What the owners do with their teams is not in the players’ control. However they want to run their businesses is their business.”
Peyton Manning, who loves the history of the game and grew up idolizing Unitas just as his father did, was a touch more conflicted. To play in the same area that Unitas’ reputation was groomed moves Manning.
“I realize we play in different cities, but I am proud to wear the same uniform that he wore,” Manning said. “Since I haven’t seen every quarterback that’s ever played and my dad says that Johnny Unitas was the best to ever play, that’s kind of what I go with as well. And just what he kind of did to the whole game of football, especially the passing game – he was just a true innovator.”
The city that played host to so many of Unitas’ innovations will have a chance for a bit of revenge Saturday when the Ravens, who have won a Super Bowl, take on the Colts, who haven’t been to one since they left for Indianapolis.
As Baltimore Sun columnist Mike Preston wrote Wednesday: “Pardon us if we get excited. Excuse us if we make it personal because the team that left here almost 23 years ago is coming back to hostile territory. It doesn’t get much better than that. Well, it does. If the Colts lose, it would make a lot of us ‘old-timers’ happy again.”
And that’s the significance.
"This is where I keep my minks!" - Ray Lewiswww.raylewis52.com/
