The Indianapolis Colts are a professional American football team based in Indianapolis, Indiana. The team is part of the South Division of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL). The Colts have won five NFL Championships, including two Super Bowl titles, most recently in 2006 in Super Bowl XLI against the Chicago Bears.

The Colts relocated from Baltimore in 1984, and began their stay in Indianapolis winning 90 of 228 games through the 1997 season, including 5 playoff games. Since Jim Irsay assumed control of the franchise in 1998 after the death of his father Robert Irsay, the team has become the first in league history to win 12 games or more in five consecutive seasons.

The NFL Baltimore Colts

In 1953, a Baltimore-based group led by Carroll Rosenbloom won the rights to a new Baltimore franchise. Rosenbloom was awarded the remains of the Dallas Texans. The Texans had a long and winding history; they started as the Boston Yanks in 1944 and merged with the Brooklyn Tigers (previously known as the Dayton Triangles, an original NFL team established in the 1910s) for the 1945 season before moving to New York as the Bulldogs in 1949. The team then became the Yanks in 1950, and many of the players from the New York Yankees of the All-America Football Conference were added to the team. The Yanks moved to Dallas after the 1951 season, but played their final two "home" games of the 1952 season at the Rubber Bowl in Akron, Ohio. However, the NFL considers the Texans and Colts to be separate teams, although many of those teams shared the same colors of blue and white.

The Colts were the first NFL team to have cheerleaders, and the old Colts' fan club and marching band (now under the name Baltimore's Marching Ravens) were adopted by the new franchise.

The 1958 team, led by coach Weeb Ewbank and quarterback Johnny Unitas defeated the New York Giants at Yankee Stadium 23-17 in the NFL championship game. The game, the first-ever utilizing the overtime rule, is generally considered to be among the greatest contests in professional football history.Fact: date=August 2007

The Colts repeated as NFL champions in 1959, defeating the Giants again, 31-16. In the early 1960s, the Colts continued as an elite NFL team although they lost the NFL championship game in 1964 to the Cleveland Browns, 27-0.

In 1968, after a 13-1 season, the Colts gained a measure of revenge against the Browns, defeating them 34-0 in the NFL championship game. The 13-1 regular season and the trouncing of the Browns led NFL-based media to call the Colts "the greatest pro football team of all time". Fact: date=January 2007 The Colts went into Super Bowl III (the first in the series to officially be called the Super Bowl) against the American Football League's New York Jets as 17-point favorites, with NFL icons like Pro Bowlers Bobby Boyd (db), Mike Curtis (lb), John Mackey (te), Tom Matte (rb), Fred Miller (dl), Earl Morrall (qb), Willie Richardson (wr), and Bob Vogel (ol).