Carroll Rosenbloom was as good as his word

Posted Jul 24, 2010 by Tom McEwen

Updated Jul 24, 2010 at 12:59 AM

I believe it was a Saturday night in September, 1972, on the west sidelines at Tampa Stadium when the owner of the Baltimore Colts, Carroll Rosenbloom, used his right forefinger and tapped me in the chest. He declared, “McEwen, I tell you this now. No other city will receive an NFL franchise before you and Tampa do. You all have kept your promises.”

There were over 40,000 people in the stands for the third Colts preseason game. Rosenbloom was satisfied with the crowd and with the support from Tampa for his Colts during those game. Months before, Ike Icardi of Orlando, who owned the Johnny Unitas Hotel there, had struck a deal with the Colts for those games to be played in Tampa with promoters Bill Marcum, and for his players to train and be housed at the University of South Florida through a co-op deal with USF athletic director Dick Bowers. Those arrangements had gone well and Rosenbloom was pleased, thus the promise of future loyalty to Tampa, whose leaders had indeed kept all of their promises.

Rosenbloom was a staunch friend of Tampa and of Bucs owner Hugh Culverhouse and his wife, Joy, as was Rosenbloom’s wife, Georgia.

Months before that, Icardi had met with me at the Tampa Airport and made the full arrangements for the Colts to come to Tampa.

The pledges outlined in that oral agreement had been kept to the letter by all involved including Tampa motel owner Ted Couch and Dow Sherwood, who were involved in the ownership of properties on Fowler Avenue. Out of that deal came an arrangement that supplied quarterback star Unitas with a private suite on the back side of Couch’s hotel, reachable through a broom closet.

Three years into the Bucs’ existence, Rosenbloom drowned in the Atlantic near his home on the east coast in 1979. Throughout his life, Rosenbloom was a close friend of Tampa and the Culverhouses’ daughter Gay and son Hugh, Jr.

The point of all of this is simply to remind those who care of these strong close ties between Rosenbloom and his Tampa associates. In any dealings between our city and the NFL, Rosenbloom was a friend, which later continued through his great friends, Don Klosterman, and Jim Finks, senior and junior. The younger Finks has just published another book on the origination of the colors used by the teams in the NFL, including of course, the Buccaneers. It is a keeper for your coffee table.

These long-standing, ever-developing close associations between the Buccaneer family, the Klosterman family, the Finks family and the Rosenblooms has continued. And now, we are reminded once more of that which Carroll Rosenbloom did for the Tampa franchise.

When he punched me three times in the chest and said, “No other city will receive a franchise before you,” adding that none will be treated any better, either, he meant it and he proved it.

In part, the Buccaneers are what they will become in no small part because of Rosenboom’s pledge these years ago.

By the way, John Unitas spent a lot of that spring at Dow Sherwood’s suite and in Tampa, with wife Sandy. Tampa offered another home away from home which the great John Unitas claimed and cherished.