When the Denver Broncos head back East this weekend to take on the Baltimore Ravens, my mind’s eye will see not just the opponents in their purple and black in their beautiful state of the art stadium, but another opponent, another era, same city.

Baltimore’s pro football history began not in the National Football League, but in the old All American Football Conference, which sounds like a college “conference” but which was in fact the first significant rival pro league. The AAFC played for four years and the Cleveland Browns won the title all four seasons.

Then, on December 9, 1949, NFL Commissioner Bert Bell announced a merger agreement in which three AAFC franchises — Cleveland, the San Francisco 49ers, and the Baltimore Colts — joined the NFL and began play in 1950. In this year of celebration for the AFL, I thought it was at least worth a shout out to the AAFC, which no fan today has ever heard of, even though it spawned three of the franchises still considered legendary today.

That’s how Baltimore got into the NFL, and they were the Colts, not the Ravens.

Of course, the Broncos have been tied to Baltimore by our all-time great Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway, who was acquired by Denver from the Colts in 1983.

The Broncos played at Baltimore that year, and the game will always be memorable to me.