Hostile
The Duke
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It is quite possible that most Cowboys fans do not even realize how closely tied the Cowboys are to the Colts. In what I hope will be one of your favorite of my primer threads, please allow me to untangle this mystery for you. I apologize up front, this will be long. Hopefully it will be worth your time to read.
In 1944 a man named Ted Collins founded an NFL team called the Boston Yanks. In 1949, he moved the team to New York and changed the mascot name to the Bulldogs. In 1950 he again changed the name, this time back to the Yanks, which was short for Yankees. It was common in those days to name teams the same names as the more established baseball teams.
The 1950 NFL Yanks was the second version of Professional football to be named the New York Yanks or Yankees. From 1946 to 1949 the first version played in the All America Football Conference or AAFC.
A man returning from World War II named Tom Landry first played professional football for the 1949 New York Yankees. In 1950 when the AAFC folded Landry went to play for the New York Giants.
In 1950 the NFL added three teams from the AAFC to their league. The teams were the Cleveland Browns, San Francisco 49ers, and a team in Baltimore called the Colts. The Colts went 1-11 and promptly folded.
In 1952 the New York Yanks sold their franchise to a textiles entrepreneur named Giles Miller. He moved the franchise to Dallas, Texas and named them the Dallas Texans. They were the first Professional football team in the state of Texas. Their colors were Navy Blue and White.
Giles Miller was certain football would be huge in Texas. He was right. Just premature. The Texans played in the 75,000 seat capacity Cotton Bowl to crowds of around 17,500 and as the Texans continued to lose the crowds dwindled.
The Texans were awful. They finished the 1952 season at 1-11, and before the season even ended Giles Miller abandoned the team and the NFL had to take over operations and play games outside of Dallas.
The Texans had one rabid fan though. His name was Clint Murchison, Jr. A graduate of the University of Texas and a rabid football fan he tried to take over the hapless Texans. The NFL however shunned his efforts and in 1953 they sold the remnants of the team to a man named Carroll Rosenbloom and he re-established the Baltimore Colts.
The 1950 Colts and the 1953 Colts have no relation to each other beyond city and mascot name. The 1950 Colts had actually previously been the Miami Seahawks of the AAFC. Interesting to me was that the Miami Seahawks colors were Green and Silver, similar to the original Seattle Seahawks.
As you undoubtedly know Clint Murchison, Jr. and Bedford Wynne went on to become the original owners of our Dallas Cowboys. The Colts legacy might have never come about if the NFL had simply sold Murchison his beloved Texans. It is interesting to note that Lamar Hunt revived the name Dallas Texans when he helped establish the AFL in 1960. If he had not done that, perhaps Murchison might have called his team the Dallas Texans. He was truly a fan. The Cowboys original colors were Navy Blue and White. The same as the original Dallas Texans of 1952.
So the Colts joined the NFL in 1953 under the ownership of Carroll Rosenbloom as previously stated. Rosenbloom, like the ill-fated Giles Miller, was a textiles entrepreneur. He sold khaki uniforms to the United States Armed Forces.
The Colts started feebly then began to build momentum. They hired Hall of Fame Coach Weeb Ewbank, drafted Hall of Famers Lenny Moore and Raymond Berry, and perhaps lucked into the greatest Free Agent find of all time, a QB named Johnny Unitas. Before I go any further I want to let you know Tom Landry hired Raymond Berry to be his WR coach when Berry retired from the NFL. It was his first coaching job. He later went on to become Head Coach of the Patriots.
Raymond Berry was the most precise route runner, perhaps in NFL History. Dallas Cowboys great Walt Garrison tells a fantastic story in his book, "Once a Cowboy" about Berry teaching the Dallas receivers to run a sideline route at Training Camp in Thousand Oaks, California. He lined up on the hash mark ran his route and when he caught the ball he was out of bounds. Berry lined up again and ran the route again. Out of bounds again.
Berry went right to Tom Landry and said, "the field is too narrow." Landry asked him what he was talking about. Berry repeated his diagnosis and said either the field was too narrow or the hash marks were in the wrong place. He was so insistent that Landry finally ordered a tape measure and they discovered that the Cowboys practice field was exactly 11 inches too short. Berry knew his craft down to the very inch.
In 1958 the Baltimore Colts played the New York Giants for the NFL Championship. That game is often called "the greatest game ever played." The Colts shocked the world by beating the Giants whose vaunted defense was led by Tom Landry.
It was the first Championship for the Colts. They would repeat the feat in 1959, and then would lose Super Bowl III to the New York Jets of the AFL. Widely considered the most important game of that era the upstart AFL finally beat the more established NFL after a cocky QB named Joe Namath guaranteed victory and delivered. Most Historians agree that game greased the wheels of the AFL-NFL merger brokered by Lamar Hunt and Cowboys GM Tex Schramm.
The Colts won their third NFL Championship in 1968, and then faced the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl V after the 1970 season, the first season of the AFL-NFL merger.
That Super Bowl was called "the blunder bowl" because both teams made so many mistakes. So did the referees. They awarded a fumble to the Colts despite the fact Cowboys Center Dave Manders came out of the pile with the football. Hall of Famer John Mackey caught a TD pass off of a "tipped" ball by Mel Renfro. In those days if an Offensive player touched the ball another Offensive player could not catch it unless a Defensive player touched it first. To this day Hall of Famer Mel Renfro denies touching the ball that Mackey scored a 66 yard TD on.
That game was a genesis for me as well. It was the first football game I ever watched. I was six years old at the time. My favorite color was blue and I immediately liked the team in blue that day, the Dallas Cowboys. Incidentally, the "curse of the blue jerseys" came about because of that loss to the Colts in Super Bowl V and a loss to the Browns in the playoffs after the 1968 season.
I was watching that game with my Dad, Grandpa, and Uncle. At some point in the game I remember them being angry because Johnny Unitas was not in the game. Unitas got hurt. I announced that I was rooting for the Cowboys. They all approved of this and in my mind, this was it. I never rooted for any other team despite the fact that my Grandpa was a former player and scout for the Packers and my family were Packers fans.
Back to Carroll Rosenbloom for a minute. In 1957 he was introduced to an "exotic dancer" named Georgia by Joseph Kennedy, father of John, Robert, and Ted Kennedy. They wed and almost immediately Georgia began to pressure her husband to move to Los Angeles. She wanted to be on the West Coast.
Rosenbloom was always seemingly at war with the City of Baltimore. He would threaten to play games somewhere other than Memorial Stadium, to move the team, and in turn the city of Baltimore would threaten lawsuits and rent increases. It was a tumultuous marriage. In 1972 a man named Robert Irsay bought the Los Angeles Rams and immediately traded the Rams to Carroll Rosenbloom for the Baltimore Colts and 3 million dollars cash.
Hugh Culverhouse, the first owner of the Buccaneers, helped the two men broker the deal to swap teams.
Georgia got her wish to go to Hollywood. In 1979 Carroll Rosenbloom drowned while swimming in the ocean. The circumstances of his death have often been questioned because he had been threatened by the mob over gambling debts and even some mob confessions that Rosenbloom's legs had been held to keep him under water until he died. There was even speculation Georgia was somehow involved. In 1995 the woman who wanted to be on the West Coast moved the Rams to her hometown of St. Louis, Missouri.
Robert Irsay and his son, Jim, were involved in another big move of a football team. Not only did he buy and immediately trade a team for another team and cash, he followed through on one of Carroll Rosenbloom's biggest threats to the city of Baltimore. Irsay's relationship with the city of Baltimore was as rocky as Rosenbloom's had been.
In the early morning hours of March 29, 1984, fifteen Mayflower moving trucks showed up at the Baltimore Colts football complex and moved the entire operation out of Baltimore to Indianapolis in the middle of the night.
In 1997, Robert Irsay passed away and his son Jim became the principal owner of the Colts. He remains in place today in that capacity.
This is the 14th meeting between the Cowboys and the Colts. The Colts won the first two matchups then lost 5 in row in the regular season. But as already mentioned they defeated the Cowboys 16-13 in Super Bowl V. It is the only time the 2 teams have met in the post season. The Cowboys were 5-2 against the Colts while they were anchored in Baltimore. Since the Colts moved to Indianapolis the series is tied 3-3. That means Dallas leads the all time series 8-5.
This will be the 5th time the Cowboys have played on the calendar date December 5. They are currently 3-1 all time on that date including the 200th regular season win in franchise History in 1982 against the Commanders. Both of the Cowboys other 2 wins on this date were against the Eagles. The loss was against the Patriots.
In 1944 a man named Ted Collins founded an NFL team called the Boston Yanks. In 1949, he moved the team to New York and changed the mascot name to the Bulldogs. In 1950 he again changed the name, this time back to the Yanks, which was short for Yankees. It was common in those days to name teams the same names as the more established baseball teams.
The 1950 NFL Yanks was the second version of Professional football to be named the New York Yanks or Yankees. From 1946 to 1949 the first version played in the All America Football Conference or AAFC.
A man returning from World War II named Tom Landry first played professional football for the 1949 New York Yankees. In 1950 when the AAFC folded Landry went to play for the New York Giants.
In 1950 the NFL added three teams from the AAFC to their league. The teams were the Cleveland Browns, San Francisco 49ers, and a team in Baltimore called the Colts. The Colts went 1-11 and promptly folded.
In 1952 the New York Yanks sold their franchise to a textiles entrepreneur named Giles Miller. He moved the franchise to Dallas, Texas and named them the Dallas Texans. They were the first Professional football team in the state of Texas. Their colors were Navy Blue and White.
Giles Miller was certain football would be huge in Texas. He was right. Just premature. The Texans played in the 75,000 seat capacity Cotton Bowl to crowds of around 17,500 and as the Texans continued to lose the crowds dwindled.
The Texans were awful. They finished the 1952 season at 1-11, and before the season even ended Giles Miller abandoned the team and the NFL had to take over operations and play games outside of Dallas.
The Texans had one rabid fan though. His name was Clint Murchison, Jr. A graduate of the University of Texas and a rabid football fan he tried to take over the hapless Texans. The NFL however shunned his efforts and in 1953 they sold the remnants of the team to a man named Carroll Rosenbloom and he re-established the Baltimore Colts.
The 1950 Colts and the 1953 Colts have no relation to each other beyond city and mascot name. The 1950 Colts had actually previously been the Miami Seahawks of the AAFC. Interesting to me was that the Miami Seahawks colors were Green and Silver, similar to the original Seattle Seahawks.
As you undoubtedly know Clint Murchison, Jr. and Bedford Wynne went on to become the original owners of our Dallas Cowboys. The Colts legacy might have never come about if the NFL had simply sold Murchison his beloved Texans. It is interesting to note that Lamar Hunt revived the name Dallas Texans when he helped establish the AFL in 1960. If he had not done that, perhaps Murchison might have called his team the Dallas Texans. He was truly a fan. The Cowboys original colors were Navy Blue and White. The same as the original Dallas Texans of 1952.
So the Colts joined the NFL in 1953 under the ownership of Carroll Rosenbloom as previously stated. Rosenbloom, like the ill-fated Giles Miller, was a textiles entrepreneur. He sold khaki uniforms to the United States Armed Forces.
The Colts started feebly then began to build momentum. They hired Hall of Fame Coach Weeb Ewbank, drafted Hall of Famers Lenny Moore and Raymond Berry, and perhaps lucked into the greatest Free Agent find of all time, a QB named Johnny Unitas. Before I go any further I want to let you know Tom Landry hired Raymond Berry to be his WR coach when Berry retired from the NFL. It was his first coaching job. He later went on to become Head Coach of the Patriots.
Raymond Berry was the most precise route runner, perhaps in NFL History. Dallas Cowboys great Walt Garrison tells a fantastic story in his book, "Once a Cowboy" about Berry teaching the Dallas receivers to run a sideline route at Training Camp in Thousand Oaks, California. He lined up on the hash mark ran his route and when he caught the ball he was out of bounds. Berry lined up again and ran the route again. Out of bounds again.
Berry went right to Tom Landry and said, "the field is too narrow." Landry asked him what he was talking about. Berry repeated his diagnosis and said either the field was too narrow or the hash marks were in the wrong place. He was so insistent that Landry finally ordered a tape measure and they discovered that the Cowboys practice field was exactly 11 inches too short. Berry knew his craft down to the very inch.
In 1958 the Baltimore Colts played the New York Giants for the NFL Championship. That game is often called "the greatest game ever played." The Colts shocked the world by beating the Giants whose vaunted defense was led by Tom Landry.
It was the first Championship for the Colts. They would repeat the feat in 1959, and then would lose Super Bowl III to the New York Jets of the AFL. Widely considered the most important game of that era the upstart AFL finally beat the more established NFL after a cocky QB named Joe Namath guaranteed victory and delivered. Most Historians agree that game greased the wheels of the AFL-NFL merger brokered by Lamar Hunt and Cowboys GM Tex Schramm.
The Colts won their third NFL Championship in 1968, and then faced the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl V after the 1970 season, the first season of the AFL-NFL merger.
That Super Bowl was called "the blunder bowl" because both teams made so many mistakes. So did the referees. They awarded a fumble to the Colts despite the fact Cowboys Center Dave Manders came out of the pile with the football. Hall of Famer John Mackey caught a TD pass off of a "tipped" ball by Mel Renfro. In those days if an Offensive player touched the ball another Offensive player could not catch it unless a Defensive player touched it first. To this day Hall of Famer Mel Renfro denies touching the ball that Mackey scored a 66 yard TD on.
That game was a genesis for me as well. It was the first football game I ever watched. I was six years old at the time. My favorite color was blue and I immediately liked the team in blue that day, the Dallas Cowboys. Incidentally, the "curse of the blue jerseys" came about because of that loss to the Colts in Super Bowl V and a loss to the Browns in the playoffs after the 1968 season.
I was watching that game with my Dad, Grandpa, and Uncle. At some point in the game I remember them being angry because Johnny Unitas was not in the game. Unitas got hurt. I announced that I was rooting for the Cowboys. They all approved of this and in my mind, this was it. I never rooted for any other team despite the fact that my Grandpa was a former player and scout for the Packers and my family were Packers fans.
Back to Carroll Rosenbloom for a minute. In 1957 he was introduced to an "exotic dancer" named Georgia by Joseph Kennedy, father of John, Robert, and Ted Kennedy. They wed and almost immediately Georgia began to pressure her husband to move to Los Angeles. She wanted to be on the West Coast.
Rosenbloom was always seemingly at war with the City of Baltimore. He would threaten to play games somewhere other than Memorial Stadium, to move the team, and in turn the city of Baltimore would threaten lawsuits and rent increases. It was a tumultuous marriage. In 1972 a man named Robert Irsay bought the Los Angeles Rams and immediately traded the Rams to Carroll Rosenbloom for the Baltimore Colts and 3 million dollars cash.
Hugh Culverhouse, the first owner of the Buccaneers, helped the two men broker the deal to swap teams.
Georgia got her wish to go to Hollywood. In 1979 Carroll Rosenbloom drowned while swimming in the ocean. The circumstances of his death have often been questioned because he had been threatened by the mob over gambling debts and even some mob confessions that Rosenbloom's legs had been held to keep him under water until he died. There was even speculation Georgia was somehow involved. In 1995 the woman who wanted to be on the West Coast moved the Rams to her hometown of St. Louis, Missouri.
Robert Irsay and his son, Jim, were involved in another big move of a football team. Not only did he buy and immediately trade a team for another team and cash, he followed through on one of Carroll Rosenbloom's biggest threats to the city of Baltimore. Irsay's relationship with the city of Baltimore was as rocky as Rosenbloom's had been.
In the early morning hours of March 29, 1984, fifteen Mayflower moving trucks showed up at the Baltimore Colts football complex and moved the entire operation out of Baltimore to Indianapolis in the middle of the night.
In 1997, Robert Irsay passed away and his son Jim became the principal owner of the Colts. He remains in place today in that capacity.
This is the 14th meeting between the Cowboys and the Colts. The Colts won the first two matchups then lost 5 in row in the regular season. But as already mentioned they defeated the Cowboys 16-13 in Super Bowl V. It is the only time the 2 teams have met in the post season. The Cowboys were 5-2 against the Colts while they were anchored in Baltimore. Since the Colts moved to Indianapolis the series is tied 3-3. That means Dallas leads the all time series 8-5.
This will be the 5th time the Cowboys have played on the calendar date December 5. They are currently 3-1 all time on that date including the 200th regular season win in franchise History in 1982 against the Commanders. Both of the Cowboys other 2 wins on this date were against the Eagles. The loss was against the Patriots.
