Arlen Specter: “I believe that Baltimore ought to have a football team, and that is the Colts. I think that Indianapolis is entitled to…”

“I believe that Baltimore ought to have a football team, and that is the Colts. I think that Indianapolis is entitled to an expansion team. I believe that Senator DeWine has articulated the issue cogently and forcefully on a travesty which is being perpetrated on many American cities and on many American taxpayers. There is really a situation where sports teams are entrusted with a public interest. The movement of the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles was the start of pirating in America of sports franchises and should never have been allowed, accompanied by the movement of the Giants from New York to San Francisco. We have seen that matter proliferate. It is hard to understand why the taxpayers of Maryland and Baltimore have to be in a bidding contest, which, as I understand it, approximates some $200 billion to bring a football team to Baltimore. Certainly Baltimore ought to have a football team, and it ought to be the Colts, which moved out of Baltimore in the middle of the night to go to Indianapolis.”