Ahead of the 1982 season, the Baltimore Colts were in need of a new head coach after the ousting of Mike McCormack. They found one in Frank Kush, a man with an exceptional college coaching resume after two decades of dominance at Arizona State. It was off the field, in many different respects, that his reputation wasn't so spotless. It was his less than stellar esteem amongst many of his former players that made him a problematic hire for the Colts, and after an extremely rough go of it in 1982, they earned the number one overall pick in the following draft... but it was thanks to Kush, and the chaos that Irsay had sown over the years, that they would have issues with the best prospect the league had ever seen coming to play for them. It was the following year that Bob Irsay's lease with the city of Baltimore at Memorial Stadium expired, making the Colts a free agent on the market for prospective cities to bid on. The result of this process was a chaotic few months over the course of the 1984 offseason that met it's climactic end on a snowy night of late March of that year... thankfully for a city (and a franchise) that had endured so much during and after it, better days would ultimately be ahead.
Thanks so much for listening to the series! I hope you guys enjoyed, and please hit me up with your thoughts on Twitter either @PodcastBeatdown, or @Jakelouque - Jake.
Sourcing and supplemental audio for today's show in order of appearance:
"30 for 30: Elway to Marino," http://www.espn.com/30for30/film/_/page/elwaytomarino
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1982/05/08/jury-finds-against-nfl-in-raiders-antitrust-suit/8b34f54f-10bc-43b0-951c-71867635987a/
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=MPtNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=iosDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4052%2C1147740
https://vault.si.com/vault/1986/12/15/now-you-see-him-now-you-dont
https://vault.si.com/vault/1979/10/29/theres-the-devil-to-pay
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1981/12/22/colts-fire-mccormack-hire-kush/2fc8ce61-7ce9-4830-9ebe-3de9f71e8b45/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1984/02/08/accorsi-resigns-as-the-colts-gm/73063c5f-c858-4be6-bdf7-32c89e54bc77/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1984/01/24/irsays-conclusion-phoenix-wont-fly/073e0e02-8919-4da0-b6b3-a358c1dbeaf5/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfMuo9rR-7s&t=56s
https://web.archive.org/web/20140729134050/http://www.indystar.com/article/20080815/SPORTS03/808150305/1112/NEWS10
Euchner, Charles C. "Playing the Field: Why Sports Teams Move and Cities Fight to Keep Them." Baltimore, Maryland, The Johns Hopkins University Press, September 1st 1994
https://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2014/03/28/thirty-years-ago-baltimore-tried-to-use-eminent-domain-to-seize-an-nfl-team/?sh=734aada741f5
https://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/bs-xpm-2009-03-26-bal-baltimore-colts-move-timeline-story.html
https://theathletic.com/2532338/2021/05/27/sins-of-the-father-what-jim-irsay-learned-watching-his-dad-cripple-the-colts/
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