Off Topic Thread too point uh

pickarooney wrote: »

Where do the crowds come from? I guess American fans would think nothing of driving from Milwaukee or wherever but it's still a fairly low-population catchment area. Fair play to them for keeping it local though. I was just looking at franchises who have moved and there's a team that went from Arizona to Winnipeg. Lunacy..

After he got off the phone with Irsay, Hudnut called his neighbor and friend, John B. Smith, after the deal was finalized. Smith happened to also be the chief executive officer of Mayflower Transit, an Indiana-based moving company, and Hudnut asked him to assist the team in their move. Smith sent fifteen Mayflower trucks to Owings Mills and they arrived at the Colts' facility at 2:00 AM the following morning. The reasoning for the late hour of the move was out of fear that the Maryland House of Delegates would also approve the eminent domain bill the State Senate had, which would have resulted in the team being seized the next morning once Maryland Governor Harry Hughes signed the bill into law.[15] Workers loaded all of the team's belongings and the trucks left for Indianapolis. Within eight hours of the Mayflower trucks' arrival in Owings Mills, the Colts were completely gone from Baltimore.[20] Later that day, the House of Delegates indeed passed the bill by a count of 103–19 and Governor Hughes signed it, but by that time it was too late.[21]

All fifteen moving trucks took a different route to Indianapolis from Baltimore, done as a diversion tactic so the Maryland State Police could not enforce the eminent domain law that had just been signed (which they would have been able to act upon once it took effect to force the Colts back to Baltimore). Once a truck got to Indiana, the Indiana State Police would meet it and escort it to Indianapolis—a process repeated until all fifteen vans had reached the destination.