Hm, take a lived here. It was like a minimum security.
David Letterman, an Indianapolis Natives, spent some time riffing on his hometown during the dedication ceremony for Peyton Manning statue outside Luke Soil Stadium a few years ago.
Indianapol years ago, I said.
I go to Indiana Chicago.
We truly were napped out, and I draw the comparison with Louisville.
That's Bill Benner, a longtime reporter for the Indianapolis Star who now works for the Indiana Pacers. We spoke at length about the history of Indianapolis, and you'll hear plenty of our conversation on this podcast, But toward the end of our chat, he brought up a point that drove home just how important sports have been to the growth of our city.
In nineteen sixty seven, Louisville and the Pacers both got ABA franchises, but other than that, we were at one event in town. They had the Kentucky Derby, We had the Indy five hunder and they had UK and we had IU. And by sustaining the Pacers and moving into the NBA and then attracting the Colts and building the facilities. We became Indianapolis the amateur sports capital of the world,
did all the downtown development along with that. Louisville didn't sustain the colonels when they into the NBA, and it took him forever to really get into downtown development. And a big reason for that, the comparison to two cities was the fact that we made the investments and and made kept the Pacers here and built the facilities, and
Louisville didn't. And Louisville has yet to catch up, in my humble opinion, but it's a it's a good comparison of two cities that were very similar back in the late sixties and how one did this and the other one?
Gaggle think about Indianapolis now as we know it, This city still is known for the Indy five hundred.
He's making a book, No Pipe.
Indianapolis.
He wanted parlight and for its rich basketball tradition from high school hoops to Hinklefield House to the Fever and the Pacers.
Welcome Indiana, Baca.
But Indianapolis is elevated not just on a local scale, but a national scale and a worldwide scale. For one big reason. Richardson can i take off on a quarterback drawl. He said that ten he's at the foot untouched in the end to.
Touchdown by ind why Anthony Richardson.
Forty years ago, a fleet of Mayflower moving vans arrived in America's heartland, bringing the Colts to Indianapolis after thirty one years in Baltimore. The Colts have now been in Indianapolis for four decades, fair or not. Because Indianapolis has the Colts, it's thought of as a major American city.
Louisville's a really full little city, but I call it little.
Debbie Knox began reporting and anchoring at WISH TV in nineteen eighty.
Indianapolis now is I just seized as a major league city because we've got this NFL franchise and we got an eight basketball team as well, So that's that's a very good comparison.
I've also heard us compared to Columbus, Ohio, but that's where we could be today. We'd have the five hundred and maybe we'd.
Have an NBA team, you know, and then what you got to compete and you got God loved the risk takers, you know, who have the vision and can see things in how they could be and they they've got the knowledge to look out at the horizon and see other cities and what they're doing and how it's impacting.
The look at the NFL, it's a mass. I mean, just what a business.
Knox hits on something here. The Colts transformed and are still transforming Indianapolis. How we feel about our city and how we're perceived both nationally and internationally is unquestionably tied to having our pro football team. But the story of how the Colts got here isn't exactly straightforward. It took two mayors sticking their political necks out to use sports
to develop a mid sized Midwestern metropolis downtown. It took a Jerry Lewis style telethon to save the city's pro basketball team, and it took building a state of the art sixty thousand seat stadium despite not having a tenant to even get Indianapolis a lottery ticket to become an NFL city. And then it took a cascade of serendipitous events and a bit of good fortune for those Mayflower trucks to roll into Indianapolis on March twenty ninth, nineteen
eighty four, carrying in them an NFL team. This is episode two of the Move Indianapolis. Indianapolis was established in the eighteen hundreds, but our story begins in the late nineteen sixties. Richard Lueger was elected mayor of Indianapolis in November of nineteen sixty seven, and he took office with an ambitious vision for the circle city. His plan was called Unigov, and Luger wanted to merge the governments of
Indianapolis and Marion County into one single municipal government. Ultimately, that meant ten suburban towns were absorbed into that singular government, which boosted the population of Indianapolis to nearly seven hundred and fifty thousand residents by nineteen seventy. Luger, who died in twenty nineteen, recalled the goal and impact of Yunigov during a press conference in twenty fourteen in.
Annapolis and through the Unigov experience, because we really did have a desire for greatness, for a city that was well beyond anything we had ever seen before in terms of our imagination.
Of what could occur now.
Not everybody feared that.
Some people provedly satisfied with life as it was, but ultimately a majority of people. We're very excited about being the best or vying to be the best.
While UNIGOV was not met with universal praise, it did set Indianapolis down a different path as a city.
UNIGOV was the most significant municipal government reform in the United States in the last hundred years that was not inspired by corruption or bad behavior.
Jim Morris was Luger's deputy mayor until nineteen seventy three, and he's one of the key players in the growth of Indianapolis over the last fifty years.
So when UNIGOV took place, overnight, Annapolis went from being in terms of population, went from being the thirtieth largest city in America to the ninth largest city. And now it was a bit of a fiction, but we went from eighty square miles to four hundred and two square miles. We became the ninth largest city in America between Baltimore and San Diego. So suddenly, when a list of the top ten cities was published in the Almanac or any publication, Indianapolis was on that list.
After Yunikov, Luger, Morris, and the local government set their sites on revitalizing and growing downtown Indianapolis, even with adding all those outlying Marion County communities and neighborhoods, Luger's administration understood downtown was the one area of the city everybody could use. It was the center of a vibrant city's tax base, and it could be the engine for the
growth of an entire city. And one of the major catalysts for setting Indianapolis on that upward trajectory was its pro basketball team, the Indiana Pacers.
A second point year had a third time his Hobby Leonard five year tenure. The Indiana Pacers not won it.
The same year Luger was elected mayor, the Indiana Pacers began playing as a charter member of the American Basketball Association, that old upstar challenger to the NBA with its trademark Red, White, and Blue Basketball. The Pacers dominated the early years of the ABA, winning three championships in the league's first six years of existence. But the Pacers played at the Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum, a small arena located on thirty eighth
Street north of downtown. That's where not only the Pacers played, but most events that came through Indianapolis took place.
The coliseum was big, but downtown not quite so much.
Jimmy Batis is a local native and a long time Indianapolis radio host.
It was a little sleepier, not as much going on downtown, but there were still lots going on, and the Pacers were a big part of that. But back then I used to go to their games at the Coliseum. As a matter of fact, the very first concert I ever went to I think I was fourteen, and it was at the Coliseum and it was the Jackson Five and their opening act were the Commodoors.
Around the same time as the Pacers were thriving, though, the Indiana High School Basketball Tournament moved from Butler's hinklefield House in Indianapolis to i Use Assembly Hall about an hour south in Bloomington. Ticket demand had outgrown hinklefield House's capacity, and for the nineteen seventy one seventy two season, the tournament left Indianapolis and Luger, he just like about everyone
else in this state, was a huge basketball fan. He wanted to build a proper venue not only to house the Pacers, but to bring the state's fabled high school basketball tournament back to Indianapolis.
When the idea of an Arena was in the sleep flow. Some people wanted to put it out off of I sixty fivener where Lafayette Square is today, and that's when Dick Licker said, no, no, no, If we're going to do this, it has to be downtown because it has to be that catalyst for future downtown development.
Luger got his way on October twentieth, nineteen seventy one, with a nine figure contribution from the city, ground was broken on a sixteen thousand seat arena on Market Street in downtown Indianapolis. Three years later, Market Square Arena opened its doors as one of the largest arenas of its kind in the United States, and it gave Indianapolis its first top tier venue for sports, concerts, and events, and it gave folks a reason to be in downtown Indianapolis.
Dick Licker was the first one to recognize that downtown needed to be far more vibrant than it was. Quite honestly, we only had two or three restaurants people At five o'clock, downtown shut down and people scattered to their homes in the suburbs.
From nineteen seventy four, when Market Square Arena opened through nineteen eighty six, more than one point six billion dollars were poured into downtown construction projects in Indianapolis. According to a nineteen eighty six article in the Los Angeles Times, office buildings, hotels, restaurants, and shops sprung up. The one hundred and sixty thousand square foot Indiana Convention Center was also completed in nineteen seventy two, and that's another key
part of the vision for Indianapolis. Market Square Arena would host Elvis Presley's final concert in nineteen seventy seven, and in nineteen seventy eight, the owner of Indianapolis's professional hockey team, the Racers, who also played at Market Square Arena, made an audacious move. For a remarkable fee at the time of one point seventy five million dollars, he signed the top junior player in Canada, a seventeen year old by
the name of Wayne Gretzky. Gretzky played eight games for the Indianapolis and he took classes at Broad Ripple High School before the team's financial situation led him to be sold to the Edmonton Oilers. But all of a sudden, downtown Indianapolis was a destination for locals and out of towners alike, and for a city previously known for just its five hundred mile race, it was fitting that the government and business community's vision to build around sports was at the center of those efforts.
It was controversial, people said, and why are you throwing tax bunny public subsidies at this basketball arena? But it turned out to be the first domino to fall the redevelopment of downtown.
But the progress Indianapolis made after building Market Square Arena was not guaranteed. The Pacers had to sustain the success they had at the State Fairgrounds after moving downtown. Under legendary head coach Slick Leonard, the Pacers made the ABA Finals in their first year at Marcus Square Arena. But the Pacers, a few months after moved into their brand
new digs, were in deep financial trouble. They asked the ABA for a financial assistance just after Christmas in nineteen seventy four, and though ownership vowed to keep the team in Indianapolis, not even half a year after setting up shop at Market Square Arena, there were already rumors the Pacers may skip town. Still, two years later, the Indiana Pacers made the Big show.
Four teams will be absorbed into the NBA next year. The rest of the league will terminate operations exactly.
You know it.
Wait, wait, what did you say?
The Nets, the Spurs, the Pacers, and the Nuggets are going to play in the NBA next season.
The rest of us are going to dissolve.
The terms of the ABA's merger with the NBA, though, were not favorable to those four teams. The NBA tree to the Pacers like an expansion team, meaning they had to pay the league's expansion fee of three point two million dollars, which back then was quite a bit of money to put up. The Pacers were also not allowed to participate in the nineteen seventy six NBA Draft, and for the first few years in the NBA, they weren't even allowed to share in the league's TV revenue. Still,
the Pacers were Indiana's pro basketball team. They moved to the NBA maybe with a little help from the Chicago Bulls, made sense both locally and nationally.
They were very, very popular.
Bill Benner began covering the Pacers for the Indianapolis Star in nineteen seventy four, their first season at Market Square Arena, but.
Then once they went into the NBA, George McGinnis left for the seventy six ers. Roger Brown got old, Bell Daniels got old, and so they As they were moving into the NBA, the roster changed. They weren't successful, and crowds dwindled and they became less popular. You know, we all love a winner. And because of the financial hardships that the ownership as encountering, it was difficult to attract talent to the early NBA Pacers.
The Pacers went thirty six and forty six in their first year the NBA, and their financial realities began to set in for the team's ownership. The top players from their ABA days were one by one sold off. Rumors the team would pick up and leave for greener financial
pastures began to pick up steam Arena Sports. A group of local investors who owned the Pacers made it known that without an influx of cash, they would either have to move the team or sell the team with no guarantee the new owner would keep the Pacers in Indianapolis. In fact, the Pacers ownership group didn't even have enough money to meet payroll. In the summer of nineteen seventy seven, the Indiana Pacers were on the verge of collapse. And this wasn't just a threat that the city would lose
its basketball team. The threat was that if the Pacers left, a lot of the downtown momentum created by Mayor Luger that new Mayor Bill Hudnutt hoped to push forward would be halted.
The Pacers after they moved into Marcus Square Arena, they struggled when they moved into the NBA, and they had to have a telethon to sustain support for the franchise.
With their sources for money dried up, the Pacers were all but out of options. Nancy Leonard, the team's general manager and the wife of coach Slick Leonard, proposed a last ditch option, a Jerry Lewis style telethon with the goal of selling eight thousand season tickets, which would give the team the influx of cash it needed to stay afloat. The telethon was called, in stark terms, the Save the
Pacers Telethon. As Benner wrote in the Indianapolis Star on July third, nineteen seventy seven, quote, either they sell eight thousand season tickets and survive, or they don't. This was quite literally a doer die moment for the Pacers, and in reality, it was a doer die moment for professional sports in the city of Indianapolis. Miraculously it worked. Nancy Leonard grabbed the mic with tears in her eyes just as the clock was about to strike midnight on the
Indiana Pacers. They were at eight twenty eight tickets sold. The Pacers were saved. They would stay in Indianapolis for now. And the importance of that moment, when the Pacers were financially viable enough to stay in Indianapolis should not be lost on anyone who knows what the city is like today.
The Pacers were really the hub.
They had great success, right ABA championship, beloved players. If that would have happened, I don't know that you build the convention business that you have built, and the hotels and the restaurants and all that sort of thing, the jobs, Yeah, that was mado.
Think about it. If Indianapolis, the biggest city in the most hoops crazy state in the Union, couldn't support its pro basketball team, how the hell could it support anything else when it comes to professional sports.
I think this very very possible, if not likely, that had the Pacers ended up moving, that the public would have shipped their ahead and said no to further investment in sport. That would that was a big, big thing that occurred that kind of cleared the way for the Colts still eventually come here.
Rumors would still persist about the pacers potential to skip town, though. In nineteen seventy nine, that local group of investors who owned the team sold the Pacers to Sam Nassy, a Beverly Hills businessman who had close ties to doctor Jerry Buss,
the architect of the showtime Los Angeles Lakers. Nassy pledged to keep the Pacers in Indianapolis, touting a ten year agreement to play at Market Square Arena upon buying the team that year, But in the early nineteen eighties, chatter persisted that the California based Nassy had his eyes on getting out of Indianapolis and turning the franchise into the Sacramento Pacers, and there.
Was a lot of speculation that Sam Nassy wanted to move the Indiana Pacers to the West coast, Sacramento, San Diego, maybe another team in LA who knows.
Nassy made clear his intention to sell the Pacers in the early nineteen eighties, but Indianapolis was not a community stocked with multimillionaires willing to own a major professional sports franchise. The threat of an outside investor buying the Pacers and ripping them out of downtown Indianapolis was very real. At the eleventh hour, though, two brothers and shopping mall magnets stepped in to purchase the Pacers in nineteen eighty three,
Herb and Mel Simon. They were Indianapolis natives, and they bought the Pacers more out of civic pride than anything else. Without the Simon brothers, Indianapolis could have lost the Pacers, and without the Pacers, would Indianapolis even have had a shot at luring the Colts from Baltimore. Mike Chappel, in Indianapolis native and the dean of the Colts Speed, has covered every minute of the team since they arrived in nineteen four, and he pondered that very same question.
Had the Pacers left, I mean, I can't imagine what the city would have done. Would they have been able to get up an NFL franchise, I don't know.
The Indiana Pacers were absolutely a central figure in bringing professional football to Indianapolis.
Well, we had the Pacers. They were successful.
They had been successful in the ABA, and I think the success of the Pacers sort of helped the community think that an NFL football team was a possibility.
But they're just one part of this story. Toward the end of his second term as mayor, Richard Lueger announced he'd run for a US Senate seat in the nineteen seventy six election. He won that race, by the way, and he represented Indiana in the Senate all the way
until twenty thirty. That left a decision for Indianapolis voters in the nineteen seventy five mayoral election between Robert Welch and Bill Hudnutt, the six foot sixth former pastor at Second Presbyterian Church at seventy seven hundred North Meridian Street. Hudnut's vision for the city was not only aligned with Lugers, he was even more ambitious. He prevailed, defeating Welch by
a margin of about twelve thousand votes. Welch was himself on board with Indianapolis using sports to revitalize its downtown. We'll get back to him later. Hudnutt, though, saw an opportunity for Indianapolis to put itself on the map nationally outside of one weekend in May for the Indy five hundred.
He was really a visionary, you know. I mean, he had heard enough of indian ill place and you know, with a sleepy downtown, he wanted to push the city forward.
You know.
Bill Hudnut's great line was, you can't be a suburb of nothing.
With the Pacers stability insured. In nineteen seventy seven, Hudnut, in tandem with the local government and business community, turned Indianapolis as attention to the city's next step in building around sports. In nineteen seventy eight, Congress passed the Amateur
Sports Act, which created the US Olympic Committee. The US Olympic Committee then was able to charter national governing bodies for each sport, such as USA Track and Field and USA Swimming, and Indianapolis saw an opportunity to become a destination for those sports specific governing bodies.
The Amateur Sports Act, which was kind of the impetus for this, was pasted, and shortly thereafter this group of community leaders formed the Indiana Sports Corporation nonprofit with the mission of attracting both sports feder amateur sports federations and amateur sports competitions, national championships, you'd have it.
But just because Indianapolis wanted to become a destination for amateur sports governing bodies and tournaments didn't guarantee that vision would come to life. The city had to construct state of the art facilities to become as as that desired, the amateur sports capital of the world.
They also had again to invest in facilities, and so they built the Auditorium, They built the Michael Carroll Track and Field stateum at Iupoi. They built a velodrome off of thirty eighth in cold Spring. They turned Eagle Creek into a world class rowing course.
The investment on those facilities culminated with Indianapolis hosting the US National Olympic Festival, a showcase tournament for athletes between summer Olympics years, in nineteen eighty two. Later, in nineteen eighty seven, Indianapolis hosted the Pan American Games, becoming just the second US city to host the tournament, along with
Chicago in nineteen fifty nine. Nowadays, Indianapolis is home base for several major amateur sports governing bodies like USA Gymnastics, USA Track and Field, USA Diving, and the NCAA Lucas Oil Stadium even hosted the US Swimming Trials this year. But at some point, as Hudnut and the movers and shakers in Indianapolis were eyeing becoming the amateur sports capital
of the world, a greater ambition took hold. How about we, Indianapolis take the momentum we've created by investing in sports and become an NFL city.
You could just see it was on an upper course because they had people back then, the David Fricks and mayorhad net that they realized that the drawing power and again the national clout that that sports can give can give a city, can give an area community.
In the late nineteen seventies, Indianapolis had plenty of football fans. They were just fans primarily of the Cincinnati Bengals, who played two hours to the southeast, or the Chicago Bears, who played three hours to the northwest. It was similar to the mix of Reds and Cubs fans the city still has.
To this day.
There was a climber for people wanted it that this was a football town, just didn't have a football team.
Indianapolis was known to the NFL back then too. Robert Welch who lost the nineteen seventy five mayoral election to Bill Hudnutt, was on then bistioner Pete Rosell's radar by the late nineteen seventies. The Indianapolis Star reported in April of nineteen seventy eight that Welch, along with a handful
of other businessmen, were in contact with the NFL. Sources told the Star that if a stadium were built in Indianapolis, the chances the city would get an NFL franchise would be very good, and quote a bubbletop stadium would make them nearly one hundred percent. In May nineteen seventy eight, Welch hosted several NFL owners, team presidents, and general managers
at the Indy five hundred. Among the league's dignitaries were the Chicago Bears George Hallis and the Dallas Cowboys Tech Shram, both of whom rode in the pre race celebrity parade around the track. Shram told The Indie Star after the race, quote Indianapolis certainly exhibits all the ingredients for an NFL franchise city. It's a great sports town with great leadership. But those ingredients had to come together in the form
of a new stadium. Indianapolis in nineteen seventy eight didn't have anything close to the kind of venue required to house an NFL team, and.
You had to make the investment. You couldn't have him playing.
Butler bull rubbing elbows and making grand promises with some of the NFL's most influential decision makers. Was not going to get Indianapolis an NFL team. More importantly, for Indianapolis to build a stadium that could attract a franchise, someone or Someone's had to secure the funding. That meant getting some money from private investors, of course, but it also meant needing funding from the two words every citizen and
politician dreads, new taxes. And this is where the stories of the Indiana Pacers and Bill Hudnut's vision for the city converged to create an environment where the city of Indianapolis could build a domed stadium without any guarantee of
having an NFL tenant. Hudnut in nineteen seventy nine was re elected in a landslide, winning just under seventy five percent of the vote to earn a second term as mayor of Indianapolis, with the city not only supporting its low own top flight sports team, the Pacers, but also its mayor. Hudnutt embarked on his most aggressive initiative as mayor, and.
I'm elected to the second term in nineteen seventy nine.
Hudnutt, who died in twenty sixteen, did an interview in twenty fifteen with WFYI, Indianapolis's NPR and PBS station.
Right after that election, I convened a small group of people, movers and shaker types from the Chamber of Commerce basically and said we're on We're on a trail for a football team, and in order to do that, we've got to get a stadium. And in order to get a stadium, we've got to get the money.
After directing investments into facilities with the goal of making Indianapolis the amateur sports capital of the world, Hudnutt turned his sites to building another world class facility, a sixty thousand seat domed stadium built as an extension of the Indiana Convention Center, but really as a way to attract an NFL franchise. The plan was not universally well received.
Debbie Knox, the longtime Indianapolis news reporter for WISH TV, arrived in nineteen eighty, right as the plan to build a Hoosier Dome was being hatched.
When they first started talked about building the dome and and all that sort of thing, and you're.
Kind of like, yeah, right, okay, you don't have a team.
Really, you know, what's this going to look like.
There was some resistance to that because it was going to cost money and people were going to have to contribute, you know, tax dollars and things like that.
So here's what Hudnut and the movers and shakers were up against. They wanted to build a stadium using public money, with the goal, but not the guarantee, of attracting an NFL team. Imagine if Indianapolis never wound up getting the Colts and then got passed over when the NFL expanded in nineteen ninety five, the Hoosier Dome would have hosted stuff. Yeah's sure, but it would have been a political disaster for Hudnut team.
Of course, if we hadn't gotten a team, this was the big risk for me politically. It would have been Hudnut's white elephant and what an idiot spending eighty million dollars of taxpayer money, which was not true, in order to build a giant taj Mahal where nobody was doing anything. As we used to say at the time, I didn't think about the political risk too much then because I thought it was just a great idea and no guts, no glory.
The plan was hatched to fund the stadium through an eight figure donation from the Lilliandowment, as well as five million dollars from the Kranart Foundation, and crucially, a one percent tax on food and beverages sold in Marion County. Think back to the early days of the Luger administration before UNIGOV, when downtown Indianapolis had just a couple of restaurants.
Fifteen years later, the investment in downtown, headlined by Market Square Arena and the Convention Center, led to restaurants and bars opening up all over downtown Indianapolis. Those establishments then could become a vehicle for the city's most ambitious downtown project.
Yet we had a reason to come downtown again. There was activity downtown, and with the building of Market Square Arena, guess what happened. People were coming downtown for concerts and patience games and the rodeo and hockey, and they needed a place to eat, and suddenly we had restaurants.
The city was able to raise the requisite funds about eighty million dollars, and in the spring of nineteen eighty two broke ground on construction of the Hoosier Dome. Crucially, the Hoosier Dome would be located in downtown Indianapolis, just like Market Square Arena and the Convention Center, and not in some farmland out by the IFO sixty five loop.
At a time when plenty of professional sports teams and major American cities were eyeing expansive stadium locations outside their city center, Indianapolis squeezed their dome into a parcel of land between the existing Convention Center to the west and north and train tracks to the south.
Mayor hut Nut and the movers and shakers were very smart by getting the state eump downtown. It would have been so much different if they would moved it like many other cities forty five minutes away or thirty minutes away. By putting it downtown and betting on the comm that something was going to happen, really, without that forethought, I don't know if any of this happened.
And by connecting the Hoosier Dome to the Convention Center. Hudnutt was able to pitch the stadium not just as a destination for the NFL, but as a way for Indianapolis to attract bigger conventions, bigger events, and ultimately more people to its rapidly growing downtown.
And at the end of the day, we'd raised eighty million dollars. So we embarked on an eighty million dollar project not as a freestanding facility out in the cornfields, but as an expansion of the convention Center, and we were able to book a lot of new convention business in and enhance our competitive position there. Regardless of whether we've gotten the team.
Hudnut in the business community were always confident they would be able to get an NFL team. The expectation was the NFL would view Indianapolis as an ideal destination for an expansion franchise. Late in nineteen eighty one, hudnut in Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce chairman Thomas Moses formed a civic committee to pitch the NFL on expanding to Indy. The Indianapolis Star report on the committee included this line, which read, quote NFL expansion is expected in nineteen eighty two, probably
by two teams. Hud Nutt emphasized Indianapolis had to put forth a strong bid to beat out several other cities, including Memphis, Jacksonville, Phoenix, Birmingham, Alabama, Portland, Oregon, and Honolulu. What those cities didn't have, though, was a state of the art facility for a team to move into Indianapolis by building the Hoosier Dome. Before getting a team would have that. They already pushed a new tax through, meaning there wouldn't have to be any political wrangling for a
new facility to be built. That put Indianapolis at an advantage. But NFL expansion was complicated by an ongoing anti trust suit between the NFL and the Raiders, who moved from from Oakland to Los Angeles against the league's wishes in nineteen eighty two. That litigation had to be put to bed before the NFL would consider adding any more teams. Eventually, the Raiders did prevail in court they could move to
Los Angeles. That would turn out to eventually be good news for the city of Indianapolis, as it cleared a barrier for teams looking to relocate, like a few years later, the Baltimore Colts, but in that moment, it changed the NFL's tune about expansion, throwing cold water on Indianapolis's hopes of getting a team in the near future. When ground was broken on the Hoosier Dome in the spring of nineteen eighty two, the city of Indianapolis absolutely anticipated the
NFL would expand in the next few years. But on January twenty ninth, nineteen eighty three, the Indianapolis News reported that NFL Commissioner Pete rosell said, quote expansion because of the legal uncertainty and today's climate is not paramount with the NFL today. Roselle's reasoning for putting expansion on hold, the Indianapolis News reported, was the prospect of Congress passing legislation that would prevent another Raiders situation, where a club
relocates without the league's authorization. Roselle said, quote, we have to be sure that the teams we award to expansion cities stay put. In June of nineteen eighty three, Dan Rooney, the president of the Pittsburgh Steelers and a member of one of the league's most influential ownership groups, came to Indianapolis to tour the Hoosierdom. He told the Indianapolis News the city's bid for an expansion NFL franchise was quote
on hold, pointing again to the ongoing Raiders suit. He praised Indianapolis's efforts, though, but he mentioned five other cities that were also vuying for a team, Phoenix, Memphis, Birmingham, Jacksonville, and Montreal, Canada.
We knew we were taking a bit of a risk.
I don't remember very well though, exact conversations about BT Roselle's decision, but Bob Welch had been encouraged by all.
The owners of the Bears, the owners of.
Pittsburgh and several other franchises, that we will get this done. But you know, it was never over until it was we had a deal.
In the same news article, Robert Welch expressed confidence Indianapolis would still get an NFL team, maybe as soon as nineteen eighty five, but he also pitched the Hoosier Dome as a host to big time college football games as well as the home of the Indiana high school football playoffs.
By the summer of nineteen eighty three, the Hoosier Dome, which was still under construction, had already booked two big time games, a preseason NFL game between the Chicago Bears and Buffalo Bills in August of nineteen eighty four and a Notre Dame versus Purdue College contest that September. And to be fair, the Hoosier Dome's ability to host things other than an NFL team was part of its appeal. That multipurpose use was a significant part of the pitch to citizens from cities leadership.
It was sold, it was sold hard, it was sold effectively. That was all part of it.
Look at we've got this big extra space we're going to have and the firefighters are going to come in and you know, different groups, and this is going to be great for the convention center.
And that was obviously part of the whole selling point too. And it was true.
I mean, they could use that space for that sort of thing. So they think they knew that was what they had to say, and it was true. You know, that's how that space could be used. It made it easier to swallow because people were being asked. I mean, there was a tax that was put into place, and people you know eating out was going to have to, you know, pay.
For the building of this thing. But yeah, that's exactly how it came down.
And as you sat back, you thought, okay, well that makes sense because the football team wasn't there at that point.
Still, from a political standpoint, you don't build a massive dome stadium with public money just to host conventions and concerts and events and the occasional novelty of a college football or NFL preseason game. While publicly the stadium was sold as an expansion of the Convention Center, privately hud Nutt knew just how big of a risk he was taking.
People question, why are you building a stadium when you don't have a guarantee of a team to play in it. The biggest thing was, you guys are building the state. You don't have a team. You don't have a team?
Are you nuts?
They were nuts today, very sharp way.
You don't have so many tractor pulls and concerts for that. But it showed you the foresight of the city movers and shakers to say, we're going to do whatever we can to get a team here.
While some residents may have grumbled about the construction of the who you're doing with public money? This is where Hudnut's popularity and politicking skills came into play.
They just moved ahead. They were bound and determined. So, you know, the few voices that there were, you know, to stand up to that was pretty tough.
Because Nut had lined up the business community, Frick cib everybody was on board, and I think I think the rest of the city was.
I mean I was.
I was stunned that that we were going to build a who's you're done without? Without a football team? Really, you know, what what does that mean? I mean, how does that happen?
He wanted Indianapolis to be on the map. You know, it was time for us to do something other than you know, a few of our our little, our little hotels and you know, we had the Convention Center as it was. And he had been around enough, he had traveled enough, he had been around, you know, with other mayors around the city. He could see what was happening and it's like, you know, put up or shut up, folks. And he just had that energy, you know, he just he was He just embraced people.
Got he could do that. He could he could manage people to get on his side.
And I think that's what he did because people were on board and once that Who's Your Dome was built?
Man, it was.
We were cool.
Even as the city's hopes of landing an NFL team in the near future it looked to be diminishing. Construction of the Hoosier Dome continued.
When Bob and I first came down to interview for this job, it was probably February of eighty three.
Tom Griswold is the longtime host of The Bob and Tom Show, which has been broadcast from Indianapolis for over forty years.
And we were stating at the Downtown Hyatt and I didn't know anything about the city, and I remember looking on my window and there was this big hole in the ground and the walls were going up on this big thing that would of course become the Hoosier Dome. And we, of course had no idea that behind the scenes, some very very clever and smart people were putting together a situation that would make it appealing to a team like the Coals to move here.
The pillowy roof of the Hoosier Dome was inflated in August of nineteen eighty three. Construction of the interior of the stadium continued that fall and into nineteen eighty four the East coast, there was chatter that the Baltimore Colts, who had been rumored to be on their way out of Baltimore for years by this point, could consider Indianapolis as a destination to relocate. Jim irsay Now, the owner and CEO of the Colts, remembers admiring the city's bold play from afar.
And Indy just did something which is unheard of. Is they built a new stadium and back then a dome stadium, which there are very few of. Ah, and they didn't have a team, you know, I mean, it's like what But.
While Indianapolis was known to the NFL for years prior to the construction of the Hoosier Dome, there was still this thought of Indianapolis, really that's an NFL city. Rick Venturrey was an assistant coach on the Baltimore Colts in the summer of nineteen eighty three when he drove his family from Baltimore back to his hometown of Pekin, Illinois.
And of course, you know, we came right through Indianapolis on seventy We came right through it. And I remember turning around to my eleven year old son Jason and pointing to the Hoosier Dome, which was vacant, and I said, man, would this be a great place for a USFL team.
Even locally, the thought of actually becoming an NFL city was a bit disorienting for Indianapolis residents.
What they were selling hard is how great a thing this was going to be for the city of Indianapolis. I think a lot of people were just kind of like stunned. It's like, we're going to.
Be an NFL city.
I mean, we don't even have a Major League baseball team. I mean we did have the pacers and stuff, but it.
Was kind of like stunned.
This is all a backdrop, though, to just how gutsy the plan was to build the Hoosier Dome. Maybe it could have succeeded financially by hosting conventions, concerts, and a few neutral psych college football games, but politically, for Hudnut, if the Hoosier Dome sat vacant on fall Sundays, he and everyone else knew it would have been a disaster.
But the venture to build the Hoosier Dome wasn't just a risky thing to do, as the cities movers and shakers saw it, It was the right thing to do in tandem with the rest of the growth of downtown Indianapolis.
You know, we knew we had to create this because we didn't have seashore, we didn't have mountains. But we had.
An incredible work ethic to an incredible group of folks that said, we're going to build a city that will will be attractive and that people will respect and want to come be a part of.
And that's happened.
And so as the Hoosier Dome neared its completion early in nineteen eighty four, Indianapolis went on the offensive. Specifically, they went on the offensive with Robert Arsay, the owner of the Baltimore Colts, who had a clandestine visit to Indianapolis earlier in the decade about moving his team to America's heartland. The only problem, all those cities that like Indianapolis were vying for an NFL expansion team, Well, they're also trying and to lure the Colts out of Baltimore.
In January of nineteen eighty four, the Associated Press reported the Colts had a handshake deal with state officials in Arizona to move out west. Within the Colts offices in Owens Mills, Maryland. For at least a couple hours, it looked like the team, after years of rumors, was on its way to Phoenix. But shortly after the report hit, Robert or Say called off the deal. He hopped on his private jet and flew from Las Vegas to Baltimore, where he called a press conference blasting the report. We'll
get into that moment in next week's episode. For Indianapolis. Though the door was open, the city of Baltimore and the entire NFL were resigned to the Colts relocating at some point in the near future.
It's not like Indy was the number one choice of Bob Ursa. I think they were close to going to Arizona to Phoenix. I really do. Indy became playan B when Plan A didn't work. But I still believe that had certain things fallen together, then a Indy wouldn't have gotten a team.
According to The Indie Star, two days after Ursay's infamous press conference, Herb Simon, who had purchased the Indiana Pacers a year prior, along with businessman Tom Shine, overheard NFL owners discussing the possibility of the Colts moving while turning down Arizona's overtures Simon and Shine pitched, according to the paper, Baltimore people on the Hoosier Dome and the rapid growth of Indianapolis, which boasted a vibrant downtown and over seven
hundred thousand residents within the city's borders. A few weeks later, Shine confirmed that the Colts would not be going to Phoenix, and according to The Star, on February eighth, nineteen eighty four, Mayor Hudnut committed to getting the Colts to move to his city. Two weeks later, he directed his deputy mayor and chief negotiator, David Frick, to quote, go for it with gusto.
Yeah, that's why I said. I don't think there was a lot of build up to this. It was sort of like, Okay, all of a sudden, a late comer to the dance is Indianapolis. And again, fortunately they had done the groundwork to be ready for that day when it came.
Frick and Nick Franzel, a local banking executive and former owner of the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins, began negotiations with the Colts. Hunn Up began working with his neighbor John B. Smith, who happened to be the CEO of Mayflower to make arrangements on how to move the Colts if Robert Ursay decided to pack up for Indianapolis. On February twenty third, nineteen eighty four, Frick flew Robert or Say to Indianapolis
for another clandestine visit. This time, he was ushered to the brand new facility the city hoped his team could call home.
They brought him in for a secret tour of the Hoosier Dome and guess what had just been installed? The blue seats, and Barber Say walked in and went, you did this for me. I've used this word so many times. It characterizes that moment, and a Karen characterizes the Indianapolis Sports Initiative serendipity. It was serendipity that the Colts, that Bob Ursay would walk in and see Colts blue seats that had been ordered long before the Colts ever knew that they were going to be in Indianapolis.
Frick told The Indianapolis Star in twenty fourteen that it was in that moment he realized Indianapolis was not just a bargaining chip for the Colts to get a better deal in Baltimore or somewhere else they were a real player to land the team. On March sixth, the Colts sent another delegation to Indianapolis. This time it was jim Irsay and then head coach Frank Kush.
And you know, frank'syche God Jimmy for you know, well, for a hell's sake, we got and moved to Arizona because Frank was from Arizona. You call your mom and let her convince. I go, Frank, my mom's not going to decide this. I mean, for God's sakes. I mean, yeah, it's ridiculous. It's just she has nothing to do with it is his decision, you know.
Oh, come on, ja man, we gotta move here.
So I called my dad in the morning. Dad, Frank and I are in Indianapolis.
What do we do?
Now?
What are you doing in Indianapolis?
What the hell is going on? I go, you told me to go to.
Indianapolis with Frank Kush right around five o'clock in the afternoon.
And he goes, oh, okay, I'll call you.
Back, Hudnut.
That spring, flew to Honolulu for the NFL owners meetings, where Ursa was not in attendance, but he did pitch other league owners on Indianapolis as a destination for the NFL. But when Hudnaut arrived back in Indianapolis on March twenty first, nineteen eighty four, he saw a wire report that the Colts would stay in Baltimore for nineteen eighty four. It wasn't true. Robert Ursay told him the next day. The Colts were still willing to move. Specifically, they were still
willing to move to Indianapolis. But the Colts had been willing to move before, and this situation was incredibly volatile. They had been on the edge of their cliff in Baltimore for a while. Now what they and the city of Indianapolis needed was someone or something to make them take the leap. Which brings us to the night of March twenty eighth, nineteen eighty four. We'll tell the story of that fateful night, a knight that made an indelible
mark on two cities. On episode three of The Move May Fly, Skim.
Clears his throat like you always did in those days. He always cleared his throat before he delivered. And I'll never forget it what he said. He said, Okay, man, he goes. The deal has been done. We're moving to Indianapolis tonight. The trucks will be here at eleven.
Yeah, they're stealing stuff, right, and lew because it was mass Chao.
The last person out, the very last person that was gentleman by the name of Walter Kotasking.
Walter was the p architector and he out and I'm paraphrase and.
Said, guys, don't stay that a cold They're gone and anything closed again, and that was it.
If you pick a city outside the NFL San Antonio, you tend to think less because they don't have an NFL team. Now that's completely irrational, it's completely ridiculous, but we all do it. And so when Indianapolis shows up, you're like, how can they They're not an NFL city, how can they? How can they take this team?
The story of how the Colts picked up and moved in the middle of the night will be told on episode three of The Move. The episode will be released on July eighth. Subscribe to the Colts Audio Network to download episode one of The Move, which was released last week. Episode two of The Move was written and narrated by JJ Stankowitz and produced by Casey Valier amber Daro Dave Knickerbocker and Matt Taylor contributed with research and editing.
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