Team management
Focus groups, a telephone survey, and a fan contest were all held to help select a name for the new franchise. Team management started with a list of 17 names from an original list of more than 100. From there, focus groups of a total of 200 Baltimore area residents reduced the list of names to six, and then a phone survey of 1000 people trimmed it down to three, Marauders, Americans, and Ravens. Finally, a fan contest drawing 33,288 voters picked "Ravens," a name that alludes to the famous poem, "The Raven", by Edgar Allan Poe, who spent the early part of his career in Baltimore, and is also buried there. The name was announced on March 29, 1996. Edgar Allan Poe also had distant relatives who played football for the Princeton Tigers in the 1880s through the early 1900s. These brothers were infamous players in the early days of American football.