represents, the Ravens have been a tonic for what ails this town since 1996.
Never let your children forget what a magical sports ride every Ravens and Baltimore football fan has had in the modern era. We didn’t have one parade – we’ve had TWO.
But with that attention, affection and glory comes an expectation from the fan base.
Our happiness and civic unification came at the expense of the people of Cleveland, who lost their football team. I spent 48 hours in Northern Ohio over the weekend. Browns fans spent three years without their team in 1996, 1997 and 1998. Since 1999, they have had the worst franchise in North American sports – horrible ownership, leadership, coaches, players.
It’s been different here.
In the aftermath of Modell moving the team here, many wondered whether Baltimore would be capable of supporting an NFL team sandwiched between Philadelphia and Washington.
In the mid 1990s, it was believed that Charlotte, Jacksonville, St. Louis and Nashville were all far more attractive communities for expansion or relocation than Baltimore.
Now, a quarter of a century later, after sitting at the bar at Bohager’s with a bottle of still unopened champagne from a night when Wayne Weaver and the Jacksonville Jaguars won a beauty contest with Baltimore – and we had THREE ownership groups lined up who were bullish on the Charm City – well, you don’t forget.
And whenever I go to South Georgia for a game – and it’s a likely spot for the Ravens first playoff game of 2018 in two weeks – I never fail to notice all of those empty seats and all of the malaise that has been the hallmark of the lowly Jacksonville Jaguars since “The Sun King” Paul Tagliabue made the mistake of putting a team in that two-bit nowheresville in the middle of the SEC. They sell off a home game every year to London to keep the team solvent. Imagine if Baltimore would’ve landed THAT turd franchise!
Oh, and Jerry Richardson has been in the news for all of the wrong reasons this week in Charlotte. That franchise has been the epitome of “fair weather” over the years as well. The seats in their stadium are blue. I know this because I’ve seen them empty a helluva lot over the years including that day when the Ravens played there with 20,000 of us in purple stopping traffic on I-85.
The ghosts of Baltimore’s football past are numerous and ominous.
The love for the community-based Colts in the 1950s and 1960s is legend. The wayward souls of the 1970s led to the abandonment and move to Indianapolis in 1984 by Irsay. Then, in my era, pining away for a team for a dozen years and the selling of our civic soul to steal the Cleveland Browns.
I asked John Moag this week about whether he could’ve envisioned that 22 years after he signed a deal with Art and David Modell on the tarmac at Hopkins International Airport in Cleveland to bring the Ravens to Baltimore, we’d have two parades, a couple of first-ballot Hall of Famers and never an empty seat in our stadium.
Seriously, short of Tom Brady and what the New England Patriots have cheated and accomplished over the years, what more could you want as a football fan in Baltimore?
We have been spoiled as NFL fans.
I have witnessed every brick on this road since 1995. Jonathan Ogden handed me the first hat that ever said “Baltimore Ravens” and it sits behind me when I broadcast every day.
It’s been quite a ride for football and Baltimore in the modern era.
Unquestionably, the Ravens have been a great thing for our city. We got what we paid for and then some.
But I’m not here to talk about the past.
PART TWO OF “THE GHOSTS OF BALTIMORE FOOTBALL PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE” is coming tomorrow.
