ROSENBLOOM, CARROLL

ROSENBLOOM, CARROLL (1907–1979), businessman and U.S. National Football League team owner who ran some of the game's most successful teams from the 1950s to the 1970s, a friend of celebrities and known for gambling on football and horses. He worked in his father's shirt company in Baltimore after attending the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a member of Jewish fraternity ZBT. He was so successful he retired at 33. As World War II began, he returned to business and manufactured material for military work uniforms. In 1953, NFL commissioner Bert Bell, his football coach at Penn, convinced him to organize a group to rescue a failing franchise and create the Baltimore Colts. Rosenbloom's initial personal cash investment for 51 percent ownership was $13,000. Five years later the Colts defeated the New York Giants 23–17 in the NFL championship, an overtime contest sometimes called "The Greatest Game Ever Played." The Colts repeated as NFL champions in 1959, and remained an elite team through the 1960s. The Colts went into Super Bowl III in 1969 against the American Football League's New York Jets as heavy favorites, but were defeated in one of the greatest upsets in U.S. sports history when Joe Namath led the Jets to a 16–7 victory. Rosenbloom and fellow owners Art modell (Cleveland Browns), and Art Rooney (Pittsburgh Steelers) facilitated the NFL merger with the AFL by moving to the newly created AFC. The Colts won the first post-merger Super Bowl in 1971, and two years later Rosenbloom traded the Colts to Robert Irsay for the Los Angeles Rams, paying Rosenbloom a reported $3 million on the side to seal the deal. An active owner, Rosen-bloom made the Rams a successful team in the 1970s that won six consecutive division titles. Rosenbloom died in a mysterious drowning in 1979. His widow, Georgia, whom he had met at the Palm Beach home of presidential father and businessman Joseph P. Kennedy, became the Rams' majority owner. Rosenbloom, with business associates Morris Mac Schwebel and Lou Chesler, also acquired the film libraries of Warner Brothers and Twentieth Century Fox, major U.S. movie studios launched by Jews. The deals came under U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission scrutiny. (Alan D. Abbey (2nd ed.)