Carroll Rosenbloom

Dale Carroll Rosenbloom (March 5, 1907 – April 2, 1979) was an American businessman. He was the owner of two National Football League franchises; he was the first owner of the Baltimore Colts, and later switched teams, taking ownership of the Los Angeles Rams in 1972.

During his stewardship of both franchises, Rosenbloom amassed the best ownership winning percentage in league history (.660), a total regular season record of 226 wins, 116 losses, and 8 ties, as well as 3 NFL championships ( 1958, 1959, 1968), and one Super Bowl ( V).

Rosenbloom has been described as the NFL's first modern owner and the first players' owner. Rosenbloom was part of the NFL inner circle that negotiated the league's network TV contracts with NBC and CBS and the NFL/AFL merger, both of which contributed to professional football becoming both profitable and the most watched spectator sport in the United States.

Early life and education

Born Dale Carroll Rosenbloom in Baltimore, Maryland, to Anna and Solomon Rosenbloom, he was the eighth of nine children, raised in a Jewish family. His father, an immigrant from Russian Poland, started a successful work-clothing manufacturing company.

As a youth, ''Sports Illustrated'' described Rosenbloom as an "indifferent student" but a "good athlete," and competed in football, baseball, and boxing.

Rosenbloom graduated from Baltimore City College in 1926 then later that year attended the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he studied psychology and business and was a two-year letterman as a halfback on the football team in 1927 and 1928. At the time, the Quakers' backfield coach was Bert Bell, who became the commissioner of the NFL in .

Business career

Upon graduation, Rosenbloom returned to Baltimore to work for his father's clothing company. After being sent to liquidate the Blue Ridge Overalls Company, a small factory his father had acquired, Rosenbloom decided he wanted to run the fledgling company on his own. Based in Roanoke, Virginia, Blue Ridge had suffered during the Depression. But Rosenbloom was intent to turn it around. When the U.S. Civilian Conservation Corps was authorized in 1933 and officials needed denim work clothes, Rosenbloom successfully secured Blue Ridge a large order.

By 1940, after attaining distribution through large channels like Sears-Roebuck and J.C. Penney, Blue Ridge had grown into a prosperous company allowing Rosenbloom to retire at 32. (As a youth, Rosenbloom told his brother Ben he planned to retire at 34.) During a brief retirement, Rosenbloom lived as a gentleman farmer on Maryland's Eastern Shore, growing corn and peaches. As well, during this time, Rosenbloom married Velma Anderson.

Rosenbloom's father's death in 1942 cut his retirement short, however. When Rosenbloom was named the executor of his father's estate, he chose to return to business life.

By 1959, Blue Ridge had grown to include almost a dozen shirt and overall companies and 7,000 employees, leading some to dub Rosenbloom "America's Overalls King." In the financial interests of his family, Rosenbloom decided to sell the company to P & R, the price being $7 million in cash and more than $20 million in stock. At P & R, Rosenbloom served as a Director.

With the success of his first enterprise, Rosenbloom diversified his business interests. In the late 1950s, Rosenbloom and his partners bought control of Universal Products Co. He went on to buy American Totalisator and other small companies, eventually lumping them all together under the name Universal Controls, Inc.

Rosenbloom was one of the largest individual shareholders in Seven Arts Productions Limited, which backed the Broadway musical ''Funny Girl'', and the films ''Lolita