NFL Clings to Its California Dreamin’ as Houston Primps and Fumes

No matter the season. No matter the guest. It doesn’t even matter what athletic event they’re discussing. When Houston radio hosts turn to sports, callers want to know the same thing.

What are we, chopped liver? What does a town have to do to get pro football?

“The whole thing stinks!” a male caller groused to sports show host Charlie Palillo recently. “We’ve got all our ducks in a row. What about . . . Houston?”

The problem, of course, is Los Angeles.

Craving access to the nation’s second-largest media market, National Football League owners make little secret that they hope the 32nd franchise goes to Los Angeles. Last March, 29 of the 31 owners confirmed the sentiment in a vote, pledging the new team to Los Angeles if the city can propose a viable facility and financing plan by Sept. 15.

If Los Angeles doesn’t come through, however, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue has promised the franchise will go to Houston. That hope has kept the city primping and eager for more than a year now, like an ingenue awaiting a prom date who may never show up. The long wait has also sparked irritation in Houston, crazy for football and sensitive about its status as only the nation’s fourth-largest city can be.

Even before the NFL announced the formation of a 32nd expansion team more than a year ago, Houston already was assembling a stadium and financing package.

Respected energy industry billionaire Robert McNair joined hockey team owner Chuck Watson to bid for the team, pledging as much as $500 million to the league in expansion fees. A newly formed Sports Authority, authorized by a narrowly won referendum to raise stadium funds, has begun collecting hotel and rental car taxes.

In all, the city has guaranteed $195 million in public funds--about two-thirds of the total cost--toward a new stadium. Sweetening the offer are $35 million from the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, which would be a cotenant; $193 million in county funds for an adjoining exhibition hall and a proposed $300-million rail line that would connect the new stadium with downtown Houston.

Approved for construction near the Houston Astrodome less than 10 miles from downtown, the stadium would include a glass shell, a roof that can retract in 10 minutes and about 29,000 parking spots.

In recent years, other cities have launched similar wooing frenzies. Though studies suggest they don’t help most economies, sports teams and the big-ticket construction projects they spawn have come to symbolize civic vitality. And losing a team--as Cleveland lost the Browns, Baltimore lost the Colts and Houston lost the Oilers--can mean a lingering wound.

Los Angeles, however, has proved blase about pro football, slow to form stadium or parking plans, sluggish before informal NFL deadlines, adamant against public funding for teams. The indifference only makes Houston’s courting more poignant. “We’re being two-timed and we know it,” Palillo says.

But after the Houston Oilers had a number of poor seasons and a series of city expenditures to improve the Astrodome, owner Bud Adams requested a new stadium. The city refused, and in 1995 Adams arranged to move the team to Nashville, which offered an alluring package, including the coveted new stadium.

But, Houston fans hasten to say, the Oilers’ departure reflects Houston’s disgust with the sometimes abrasive Adams--not any stint in its love of football. Until the Oilers’ grim final seasons, the team was one of the NFL leaders in attendance.

“It really hurt a lot of people when Bud Adams moved for money. And that’s what he did,” says Bill Cooney, assistant manager of BW-3, a sports bar. “The guy didn’t have any consideration for the city, for the fans that made him millions of dollars.”

To the fans who call radio host Palillo, there’s something particularly galling about Texas losing football to California. Does California, they demand, report high school football scores on the nightly news? Would Los Angeles pony up two-thirds of the cost for a stadium, as Houston did?

“This is a football-crazy state and a football-crazy city,” Sports Authority chief Jack Rains says. “This is football country.”

Houston’s greater passion for football can even be quantified. In a January 1998 poll by the Los Angeles Times, only 38% of the city’s residents said they believed it was very important or somewhat important to get a new sports team. But a March survey that year, commissioned by McNair’s NFL acquisition group, found that 57% of Harris County residents believed another franchise was very or somewhat important.

On the other hand, the contest between Houston and Los Angeles is ultimately about dollars and cents--something even the most ardent fans in this capital-driven city understand well.

“It’s a business decision,” says Stephen Klineberg, a Rice University sociologist. “Houstonians, more than anyone else in the world, recognize this mentality.”

Popular both with NFL owners and the Houston fans who share his goal, the easygoing McNair made his billions in the electric industry before venturing into civic activism, racehorse breeding and now football.

Sounding relaxed after a wilderness trip to Alaska, McNair nevertheless betrays pique at the NFL’s coyness.

“I will say this,” McNair says. “I don’t think that the NFL has given Houston the proper respect that it deserves. . . . Houston stepped forward to do what should be done. As far as Houston is concerned on the 32nd franchise, when we say something in Houston, we mean what we say.”

And there might be other fish in the sea for Houston--including buying an existing franchise from another city, though McNair has promised he will wait until Sept. 15 before exploring that option. McNair continues to be optimistic, telling a Houston TV station on Sunday that two NFL owners had indicated his odds for getting a team were better than 50-50.

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello maintains that the league has played the perfect gentleman toward Houston and McNair.

“Our clubs decided to try to pursue placing an expansion team in Los Angeles if we can put together the right stadium plan,” he says. “And if it’s not accomplished by [Sept. 15], we’ll turn to Houston.”

But there’s more to professional football in Houston than the sport.

There’s the self-image of Houston, a prosperous city still in adolescence, a bit self-conscious--and competitive with its close, rising sibling Dallas.

But sociologist Klineberg thinks Houston’s NFL quest reflects a more complex issue: the changing self-image of a city emerging from the second tier of municipalities into the first. Houston, Klineberg points out, doesn’t need a football team, economically.

From its 1980s recession, the city has made a breathtaking recovery. Downtown has flowered in the last two years, with no football stadium to help it along, thank you. Houston’s ice hockey team, men’s and women’s basketball teams and baseball teams are all stars.

But Houston “has the feeling . . . its great accomplishments are underappreciated,” Klineberg says. “The other three cities [in the top four] are giants in the American imagination--New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.”

Houston’s angst at losing a team to Los Angeles, Klineberg believes, isn’t economic so much as psychological. “Nashville needed the team more than Houston,” Klineberg says. But “Houston needs it more than Los Angeles.”