When I first started following the NFL, the Baltimore Colts were still in existence. I was eight years old during their last season in B-More, but I was already football-savvy enough to understand Baltimore’s place in the pecking order- the absolute bottom. My dad, who habitually referred to them as “Baltimore” even when they’d been playing in Indy for years, talked about the Colts being great, because they were great, when he was a kid. But they weren’t great when I came up. Far, far from it.

The story of the Colts and their last years in Baltimore touches on just about every aspect of the Worst of Sports, franchise-style. Postseason failure, devastating injuries, lousy ownership, poor player evaluations, debilitating addictions, wholesale betrayal of a fan base- you name the malady, it pops up at one stage or another in the woeful story of the fall, brief rise and final plunge to the abyss of a team whose last years resembled a computer rendition of that Egyptair plane being brought down by its own pilot a few years back. It’s the 22nd anniversary of a snowy Maryland night, a fleet of Mayflower trucks, and the move to Indianapolis. So it’s as good a time as any to retell this tale of woe.

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The Colts were one of the best teams in football for years and years; from the late ‘50s into the ‘70s they won a Super Bowl, three NFL Championships, five conference championships, and two division titles. But from 1972 through ’74, they had a three-year record of 11-31. The core of the great teams of the 1960s had gotten old all at once. For a time there was no adequate talent in Baltimore to replace the aging and departed stars of previous years. The team languished. In 1974 the Colts hit rock bottom, finishing just 2-12, the worst record in the league. They had become easy pickins’ for the new powers of the game, as teams that once quaked at the sight of the Horseshoe Helmets on the schedule, now routinely swaggered into venerable Memorial Stadium and got healthy at Baltimore’s expense.

But in 1975 came a revival. After starting the season 1-4, the Colts exploded, winning their final nine games and dethroning Don Shula’s Dolphins as champions of the AFC East. The keys to the Baltimore renaissance were many- a talented young front four, the development of Lydell Mitchell into one of the league’s most versatile backs, top-flight young receivers such as Roger Carr and Raymond Chester, unexpected late-round finds like Bruce Laird and Stan White (I could have written this without mentioning White, a good-but-not-great linebacker, but I wanted to point him out because he’s probably the best NFL player to ever come out of my alma mater, Kent Roosevelt High School, and I’m provincial like that). But the piece de resistance of the brave new Colts was quarterback Bert Jones.

Bert Jones isn’t remembered like some of his contemporaries, such as Terry Bradshaw, Roger Staubach, or Ken Stabler. His prime years shortened by injuries, Jones isn’t a Hall of Famer, and never will be. But for a period of time in the middle of the ‘70s, there wasn’t a better pure passer in football than the country boy from LSU. Jones was a prodigal talent, reminiscent of John Elway not only in the #7 on his jersey, but in his size, running ability, and cannon arm. And much like Elway was the Denver franchise in the 1980s so was Jones for Baltimore in the ‘70s. With Bert Jones went the Colts.

And with Jones healthy and firing heat-seekers all over Memorial Stadium, the Colts were very successful- to a point. Baltimore went 31-11 from 1975-77. In one 33-game stretch lasting from Week Six of the 1975 season through Week Ten of the ’77 campaign, the Colts were 29-4.

But for all this success, the faint, sulphuric whiff of failure hung over the franchise. The Colts weren’t just masters of the AFC East. They were also masters of horrible timing. Their rise to power coincided with the dynastic peak of the all-conquering Steelers. Baltimore’s reward for its remarkable 1975 turnaround was an all expenses-paid trip to Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium for a divisional playoff game against a Steelers team that was for all intents and purposes unbeatable. Pittsburgh briefly knocked Jones out of the game with a knee injury and cruised 28-10, scoring the clinching touchdown on a 93-yard fumble return by Andy Russell. Legend has it this game saw the invention of the Terrible Towel, meaning Baltimore’s failure in essence gave birth to the doleful phenomenon of thousands of yinzers waving yellow rags while Myron Cope gratingly intones, And look at dis, da Terrible Towels are all over da place, dare flyin everywhere… bad things, man, bad things.

Anyway, the beat-down in Pittsburgh, while not surprising, was an unpleasant way to end a magnificent season. But it didn’t get better. The springtime turned out to be just an Indian summer; and the catalogue of Worsts began. Maybe not the Worst in every area, but a good contender for any Top Five list, at any rate:

The Worst Playoff Defeat- In 1976, the Colts won the AFC East for the second straight year, and sailed into the playoffs riding an offense that had averaged almost 30 points a game in the regular season. Bert Jones had his greatest season in ‘76, throwing for 3,104 yards, 24 touchdowns, nine interception, and a 102.5 QB rating. Lydell Mitchell finished third in the NFL in rushing yardage and receptions. Roger Carr, the white Flipper Anderson of his day, piled up 1,112 yards on just 43 receptions (an average of nearly 26 yards per catch), and 12 touchdowns.

The high-powered Colts were at home in the Divisional Playoffs, and here came the Steelers again. Like the Colts of the previous year, Pittsburgh had started the year 1-4 and closed out with nine straight wins, five of them by shutout, outscoring their opponents 234-32 in the process. The Colts were a good team. The Steelers were a great team, one that was hitting on every possible cylinder. Baltimore never really had a prayer, although they probably thought they did- at least until the games’, and Pittsburgh’s, opening possession when, on the third offensive play, with the Steelers facing a 3rd-and-8, Bradshaw took advantage of double-coverage on Lynn Swann and hit Frank Lewis straight down the middle of the field for a 76-yard touchdown. Oops.

Pittsburgh rolled up 526 total yards, held the Colts to 170, and trashed Baltimore in Memorial Stadium, 40-14. Bradshaw completed 14 of 18 passes for 264 yards and three touchdowns, running up a perfect quarterback rating of 158.3. Jones went 11 of 26 and was picked off twice. Pittsburgh stole Baltimore’s offense, and kept its own defense to go along with it. It was a tough break for the Colts, and although there are far worse defeats in margin, you’d have to look pretty hard to find another team that get thrashed as comprehensively as this, in its own building, in a playoff game.

The Worst Fan Stunt- Appropriately enough, it came on the same day as the loss to the Steelers in the ’76 Playoffs. Twenty minutes after the final gun, a Colts fan and licensed pilot crashed his small plane into the upper deck of Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium. No one, including the pilot, was hurt- the stands had cleared out in a hurry after the game, as downcast Colts fans were in no mood to hang around the scene of their team’s evisceration- The crumpled Cessna dribbled fuel over the empty seats, upper deck, but fire crews were on the scene and, unlike Baltimore’s secondary, Memorial Stadium was saved from going up in flames.

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Baltimore bounced back to win the AFC East for the third consecutive year in 1977. This time the Colts avoided the Steelers in the first round of the playoffs. They had a new opponent in the Raiders, and found a new way to lose, as<