@lodilobo said:
I'm pretty sure that you know a little bit about this subject, so you could be right about the law / lease blocking the name being transferred to Baltimore, but I vividly remember the NFL commissioner being very quick to add an expansion team in Cleveland to replace the old team. Don't make me start looking for details to prove this. We both know it happened. Where you and I have always disagreed, is the fact that the team actually moved. I know you will say they didn't, because we retained the history, name, colors, etc., but our team was gone and was relocated to Baltimore. Also....I did not follow closely, the move of the Colts from Baltimore, but I recently read that there was a law in place to block that move, but Irsay simply disregarded it. It's also a fact that the few years prior to that move, the Colts fans were not filling their stadium. Sure, Irsay screwed the fans and the city, but why didn't the NFL award them an expansion team in a reasonable amount of time? My guess is because the NFL is all about the bottom line profit, and because the fans had not been showing up in recent years, they just said..screw them.
Just a brief comment look up the term assignment when it comes to legal contracts. That is what happened with the team. Contracts were assigned to a new corporate entity.