Baltimore Stallions

Baltimore Stallions

Founded	1994
Folded	1995
Based in	Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Home field	Memorial Stadium
Head coach	Don Matthews
General manager	Jim Popp
Owner(s)	Jim Speros
Division	East (1994) South (1995)
Colors	Royal blue, silver, black, and white
Grey Cup wins	1 (1995)
Uniform

The Baltimore Stallions (known officially as the "Baltimore Football Club" and previously as the "Baltimore CFL Colts" in its inaugural season) were a Canadian Football League team based in Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States, which played the 1994 and 1995 seasons. They were the most successful American team in the CFL's southern expansion into the United States, and by at least one account, the most successful expansion team in North American professional sports history at the time.^[1] They had winning records in each season, and in both years advanced to the Grey Cup Final. In 1995, they became the only American franchise to win the Grey Cup.

In the final weeks of the Stallions' second season, it became public knowledge that the Maryland Stadium Authority and City of Baltimore were in serious negotiations with Art Modell, the long-time owner of the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League (NFL), to move his franchise to Baltimore for the 1996 season. Stallions owner Jim Speros knew his team could not begin to directly compete with the overwhelmingly more popular NFL brand. Even before the agreement with Modell became official within a month of the Stallions' Grey Cup triumph, he was actively seeking to re-locate his team elsewhere. Speros ultimately chose to move his football organization to Montreal and reconstitute it as the third and current iteration of the Montreal Alouettes. The Stallions franchise was dissolved, thus becoming one of three Grey Cup champions in the modern era to subsequently fold (the others being the Ottawa Rough Riders and the original Alouettes). The CFL considers the Stallions to be a separate franchise from the Alouettes.