Before the Colts moved from Baltimore to Indianapolis in the middle of the night of March 28, 1984, the team came close to moving to Phoenix.
"This was January 19 of 1984," Colts chief operating officer Pete Ward recalled in Episode 3 of The Move. "I was an administrative assistant. I was down the hall from the general manager, Ernie Accorsi. Jim Irsay was in Tampa for the Super Bowl that year. … I was delivering a document to our general manager at the time, into his office, and he was on the phone with Mr. (Robert) Irsay. And he hung up, and it was me and one other person, and it was me and one other person, the director of marketing, who was a close friend of Ernie's back then.
"And he said, we're moving to Phoenix. We're moving."
For years leading up to 1984, the Colts were rumored to be on their way out of Baltimore. But for a few hours in January, there appeared to be a deal to make the club the Arizona Colts.
The deal, of course, fell through. But it's the starting point for telling the story of why the Baltimore Colts became the Indianapolis Colts in about 24 hours just a few months later.
"The reason for the stealth, the reason for the immediacy – Baltimore was going to try to block Bob from leaving," former Colts assistant coach Rick Venturi explained. "And they were going to try to block him with the legal concept of eminent domain. Which essentially says that the community owns the franchise and you can't move it. And he, I guess felt, and his legal people felt that maybe they could do that. And so he was going to get out of dodge before it was going to get to the house. So that was the reason for the stealth and immediacy of it."
Episode 3 of The Move ("Mayflower") explores not just the chaotic night of March 28, 1984, but the events that led to Indianapolis gaining a football team – and Baltimore losing one.
You can download The Move Episode 3: Mayflower on all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also listen to the episode on YouTube and the Colts App.
