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Bud was so stupid for moving the team from Houston


mrjono

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A team in Houston, a top 5 market in the US is worth so much more than a team in Nashville. I don't care if you have to build your own stadium it makes more financial sense than a year in Memphis, a year at Vandy and in the end you're in a tiny fair-weather fan city. 

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LOL. A 13 year sellout streak in Nashville. Yeah it was a real mistake. People in Houston didn't want to ante up for a stadium since the beautiful Astrodome was still perfectly fine for NFL football.

If it makes you feel any better...the guy who made that decision is dead now.   John McClain was on the radio earlier today and brought up an interesting point.   As McClain put it, the city of Hous

GTFO

I'm glad he did it because we finally got an NFL team here in Tennessee. As a kid growing up in the 80's i had mainly rooted for the Raiders and Steelers but was very glad when i found out there would be a team here to call our own. From day one in 1999 when they became the Tennessee Titans i was fully on board and have been ever since. I'm a diehard Titans fan and one thing i am forever thankful for is i don't have to root for the damn Steelers or Raiders anymore and we have our own team here. On the flipside i am very curious about how many people are fans of the Titans that are from Houston and still root for this team instead of the Texans.

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If it makes you feel any better...the guy who made that decision is dead now.

John McClain was on the radio earlier today and brought up an interesting point. As McClain put it, the city of Houston refused to pay for $180M in upgrades to the Astrodome, which ultimately led to Bud moving the Oilers to Nashville.

It was only a couple years later that the city invested $1.2 billion to build a stadium for the newly announced Houston Texans franchise. If they had just made the $180M in upgrades to the Astrodome, the Oilers never would have left, and the city of Houston would have saved itself over a billion dollars.

It's worse than that. The Astros and Rockets also got brand new state of the art stadiums shortly afterwards. Lanier was just as much to blame as Bud for that fiasco. The apathetic fan base didn't help the situation either.

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"Adams, sensing that he was not going to get the stadium he wanted, began shopping the Oilers to other cities. He was particularly intrigued by Nashville, and opened secret talks with then-mayor Phil Bredesen. At the end of the 1995 season, Adams announced that the Oilers would be moving to Nashville. City officials there promised to contribute $144 million toward a new stadium, as well as $70 million in ticket sales. At that point, support for the Oilers all but disappeared. Houstonians wanted to keep the team but did not want to give Bud Adams any more money for what he did. The 1996 season was a disaster for the Oilers. They played before crowds of less than 20,000 and games were so quiet that it was possible to hear conversations on the field from the grandstand. It was especially notable that the team went 8–8, finishing 6–2 in road games and finishing only 2–6 in home games."

 

http://askville.amazon.com/supposedly-prompted-Houston-Oilers-leave-Tennessee/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=60628321

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Too many years of losing. Too many years of salary disputes. And too much antipathy between Lanier and Adams. 

 

The fan base was rabid in Houston during the Campbell/Phillips years. But the reservoir was always running dry.

 

Iowa called out that Houston is a front runner town, and while I don't like to admit it, it is very true.

 

If the rapid growth in Nashville continues, y'all will understand the dilemma. When I grew up it was more likely that your neighbors were from Michigan or Ohio or Pennsylvania then Texas. They had grown up Browns, Steelers, Bengals, Giants fans. So when we won, everyone put on their cowboy boots and denims and were Houston fans. But when we lost the allegiance wasn't very deep .. easy to revert to Packer roots.

 

What has always galled me is the strong Steeler and Dolphin fan base in Tennessee. Same deal. Folks my age who grew up without a team in TN were Cowboy, Steeler and Dolphin fans. Now that the Titans are less than good, pretty easy to put the old Franco Harris gear back on.

 

In Houston we would have had 30,000 empty seats in this type of season. In Nashville you get 30,000 Steeler fans. Both are equally shitty. It's just that old Oiler fans hate the Steelers more then any other team ... they denied us the Super Bowl three consecutive years. As we transitioned to Tennessee it became the Ravens who we hated, mixing in a bit of Jaguar hate.

 

Hard to hate the Jags today. They suck. We suck.  

 

But as much as we suck, it was awesome to have the mighty Steelers on their knees. For those who listen to Sirius radio, I had the vision of Adrian from the Burg choking on his muffler emissions. And it was good.

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I'm glad he did it because we finally got an NFL team here in Tennessee. As a kid growing up in the 80's i had mainly rooted for the Raiders and Steelers but was very glad when i found out there would be a team here to call our own. From day one in 1999 when they became the Tennessee Titans i was fully on board and have been ever since. I'm a diehard Titans fan and one thing i am forever thankful for is i don't have to root for the damn Steelers or Raiders anymore and we have our own team here. On the flipside i am very curious about how many people are fans of the Titans that are from Houston and still root for this team instead of the Texans.

A good number, my dad lives in Houston and they sell a lot of Titans merch there too along with Houston, it's kind of weird

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Revisionist history.. BUD had worn out his welcome in Houston.. It was either sell the franchise or move it.. Plus at the time bud didn't have the millions to build a new stadium so he got tennessee to build one for him.

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The trend to Personal seat licenses (Astros owner controlled Astrodome USA which was landlord of Astrodome, so even if PSLs were possible in the Astrodome, the Astros owner would have probably gotten the money - I am pretty sure he got parking and concessions sales, via Astrodome USA, for all events including Oilers games, so assume he would have got PSL revenue too) and the situation of the "luxury" boxes (they were not luxury and there were not as many of them as in the new stadiums) was the  reason Adams could not financially stay in Houston.   PSLs and luxury boxes are the only material revenue NFL owners get that they do not share with other owners. Regular seat ticket revenue is split with the visiting teams I believe, and team merchandise is shared to some degree (I think teams with better selling gear get bonuses percentages of total merchandise revenue but not sure exactly.)  So with no PSLs and lower than average luxury box revenue (and Astros owner might have got some of that - I am not sure but he got much of sales in the Astrodome), Adams was at a pretty high financial disadvantage to other teams.  Combine that with all the up front money the new free agency system was costing owners in contracts, Adams could not stay in Houston - he would have lost money each year had he stayed. 

 

 

He tried to get the Astros and Rockets owners on board for a shared stadium, but neither would join him in his campaign, both knowing that if he left, which they knew he would be forced to do, they could then get their own stadiums because after losing the NFL, there was little chance Houston would let either go and would therefore give them what they wanted. 

Edited by 9 Nines
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If it makes you feel any better...the guy who made that decision is dead now.

 

John McClain was on the radio earlier today and brought up an interesting point.   As McClain put it, the city of Houston refused to pay for $180M in upgrades to the Astrodome, which ultimately led to Bud moving the Oilers to Nashville.

 

It was only a couple years later that the city invested $1.2 billion to build a stadium for the newly announced Houston Texans franchise.    If they had just made the $180M in upgrades to the Astrodome, the Oilers never would have left, and the city of Houston would have saved itself over a billion dollars.

 

Sounds like Houston just wanted to get rid of Bud by any means necessary. 

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Sounds like Houston just wanted to get rid of Bud by any means necessary.

It breaks down like this:

$200M would have kept the Oilers there forever. The Txeans cost them $1.2B. So Houston spent a billion $ (and 5 years of no team) to trade the Oilers and their history for the Txeans and their .. uh, promises.

Ok, it's their money and their choice.

Oh, and by the way, Bud died a billionaire and I'm guessing that mrjono won't. So who's stupid?

Edited by Opus74
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