10 Sports Franchises That Should Have Never Moved Cities

In 1995, Art Modell announced that he was moving the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore because, apparently, he had no other choice, which is as questionable as the late owner's business acumen. Greed was the real motivator and when Modell's greed saw him lose million in 1993-94, he packed his team's bags and left town.

The NFL returned the Browns to their rightful home via expansion in 1999 and at 77-163 since, they're still the same old Browns.

During Seattle's messy divorce with the Seattle Supersonics, the NBA franchise drafted a 6-foot, 9 small forward from the University of Texas. You may have heard of him -- Kevin Durant.

Durant went on to win ROY honors in 2007-08, and the following year, he and the rest of the Sonics became the Oklahoma City Thunder. Five straight playoff appearances later and the denizens of the Emerald City are left to wonder what could've been.

Minnesota is arguably the hotbed of hockey in the U.S.A. and the Northstars were pretty good. In the 1990-91 season, the Northstars, led by one of the best American-born players ever in Mike Modano, made it to the Stanley Cup Finals, only to lose to the Pittsburgh Penguins in six games.

They moved to Dallas in 1993, but seven ice-less years later, the NHL rightfully returned to the Land of 10,000 Lakes in the form of the Minnesota Wild.

In 1994, the Montreal Expos were the best team in baseball -- 74-40 -- when a strike ended the season prematurely on Aug. 8. No one knows how far the '94 Expos could've gone, but we know where they are now.

In 2005, the Expos moved to D.C. and became the Washington Nationals. The Nationals are loaded with talent and while they may have been able to get out of Montreal, they haven't been able to get out of the NLDS.

For the first time in history, a North American sports franchise relocated to a city it once relocated from, and there was only one man with the bravado to make it happen -- the late Al Davis.

That was back in 1995, but the Raiders weren't the only team to skip town. The L.A. Rams fled for St. Louis the same year and millions of Angelenos have been without the NFL ever since.

The Houston Oilers were never the cream of the modern-day NFL crop, but Houstonians loved their team. However, the city and its people struggled to recover from the oil collapse of the 1980s, and talks for upgrades to the Astrodome went nowhere. In 1995, Bud Adams told the city he was moving the team to Tennessee.

Now home to the Texans, one must wonder if Houston's heartbreak was even necessary in the first place.

In yet one more case of a franchise moving to another city only to have another franchise years later, the original Winnipeg Jets left The Grime in 1996 for the browner pastures of the desert in Arizona. Not surprisingly, the Arizona Coyotes have struggled to obtain a rabid -- pun intended -- fan base and at one point, the NHL had to step in and run the team.

Order was restored in 2011 when the Jets returned to Winnipeg as an expansion team.

In an attempt to rewrite history, the NBA, current Charlotte Hornets, and New Orleans Pelicans (who used to be the Hornets) all agreed that the team's history would belong to the original and current Hornets.

Therefore, as far as the NBA is concerned, the Hornets were founded in 1988; made the horrible Kobe Bryant trade in 1996; suspended team operations in 2002; returned in 2004 as the Bobcats; and reclaimed the Hornets name in 2014.

For 27 years, the city of St. Louis had two professional sports teams with the same nickname. During that span, the MLB Cardinals made six World Series appearances (winning three) while the NFL Cardinals made three playoff appearances, losing in the first round each time.

The NFL Cardinals flew the coop for Arizona in 1988, but St. Louis graciously adopted the Rams in 1995 and from 1999-200,1 the city was treated to the Greatest Show on Turf.

In perhaps the most brazen relocation in the history of North American sports, Baltimore Colts owner Robert Irsay bolted to Indianapolis in the middle of the night on Mar. 29 because the state of Maryland threatened to seize the franchise as a result of an eminent domain bill to be signed into law later that day.

It took 12 years and the spurning of another franchise's fans -- see slide No. 3 -- for the NFL to return to Baltimore.