With the NFL draft upon us, it’s expected that some trades will take part over the course of the event. Many weird draft-day deals have occurred in years past, including when the New Orleans Saints sent an overhaul of picks to the Washington Redskins for running back Ricky Williams. Trades are a part of football and always will be. The strangest trade of all, however, happened in 1972 and involved the Los Angeles Rams and the Baltimore Colts.
Baltimore Colts owner wanted out of the city
Back in the very early 1970s, Carroll Rosenbloom, owner of the Baltimore Colts, had been looking for a way to move his franchise out of Baltimore. The team had just won Super Bowl V, defeating the Dallas Cowboys 16-13 in January of 1971, and Rosenbloom felt the fans didn’t appreciate the team. According to a 1972 article in the New York Times, three games during the 1971 season that followed the Super Bowl win averaged 16,000 fans per contest.
