After six months with no name for his Canadian Football League team, Jim Speros likely will opt for status quo today in a name-the-team news conference at Memorial Stadium.
Speros is expected to pass on names such as CFLs and Stallions, and simply call his team the Baltimore Football Club.
That will allow Baltimore fans to continue a tradition born last summer when chants of C-O-L-T-S rumbled through the stadium. Fans often filled in the blank -- calling out "Colts" -- at the prompting of the team's public address announcer.
Speros, who polled fans in a survey conducted with The Baltimore Sun, apparently no longer will call his team the Baltimore CFL Football Club. He did not return phone calls to his office yesterday.
One reason for that change is that the league is expected to announce a name change of its own before the 1995 season -- likely to the Canadian-American Football League, or Can-Am Football League.
Speros originally named his expansion team the CFL Colts last March 1. But the NFL and the Indianapolis Colts sued the team over trademark infringement rights.
On June 27 -- two days before the team's first home preseason game -- U.S. District Judge Larry J. McKinney from Indiana issued a preliminary injunction barring Speros from using the Colts name.
After losing a series of court verdicts to the NFL, Speros reached an out-of-court settlement and agreed not to use Colts.
According to a release by the team Dec. 1, the names Stallions and CFLs received 80 percent of the vote in the fan survey. Speros said then there was a strong write-in vote for an unspecified name.
Apparently, it was for status quo.
Meanwhile, Baltimore nose tackle Jearld Baylis, who played last season without an anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee and with a large tear in his miniscus ligament, had both problems corrected in surgery Wednesday. Yesterday, he began his rehabilitation program.
In league news, Philip M. Johnson, who heads a financial services business in Los Angeles, has made a $100,000 down payment to purchase controlling interest in the Las Vegas Posse. The deal is contingent on satisfying 95 percent of the Posse's debt in Las Vegas, and getting a lease to the Los Angeles Coliseum. Currently the Los Angeles Raiders play there, but the facility could become available if the Los Angeles Rams move to St. Louis and the Raiders move to Anaheim to fill that void.
Ron Meyer, the Posse's coach and general manager, said Johnson had a new coaching staff lined up. But Meyer has two years left on his contract, and he may stay with the team in some capacity -- perhaps as GM.
TAGLIABUE'S VIEWS
NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue -- reacting to reports of possible relocations by the Los Angeles Rams, Los Angeles Raiders and Tampa Bay Buccaneers -- said yesterday that the NFL's owners won't make any decision on the possible moves until he makes a report to them. He also reiterated that he would like to see the Buccaneers remain in Tampa.
(Article, 4D)