Houston’s Happy, but Not Delirious

After nearly two humiliating years of courting, waiting and lavishly offering money and love, Houston finally did get the girl.

But in the first hours after hearing that the city had won back an NFL franchise, Houston sports fans seemed as much dazed as delighted.

“I love it,” crowed Randy Olney, 42, at a coffee shop near Houston’s downtown. “I’ll be a big supporter, sure. Houston didn’t seem like Houston without a football team.”

Jack Cluth, a 39-year-old mortgage banker, agreed. “Football takes on the same significance as religion here, which is to say it’s out of whack,” he said during a lunchtime stop at the BW-3 sports bar. “For Houston not to have a football team, something was definitely missing, something felt wrong. Football belongs here.”

And while the bar has witnessed countless happy-hour paeans to football in recent years, patrons weren’t quite dancing on the tables when the news broke.

For one thing, Houston fans have been through a lot since the Oilers unceremoniously left them behind and moved to Nashville.

“Houstonians are going to be a little subdued,” Cluth explained. “It’s like if your girlfriend leaves you at the altar and wants to come back. You’re going to be leery the second time around.”

But Christine Lorence, 21, a student at St. Thomas University, was overjoyed at the news.

“We got it?” she said in tones of amazement, a huge grin on her face. Then she too voiced a hint of caution. Although she plans to attend games at the state-of the-art stadium created just for the new team, Lorence added: “As much as people think of Houston as a football city, the fans really aren’t that loyal. You wonder how it will turn out this time around.”

Houston’s sports fans also have turned at least some of their enthusiasm elsewhere since the Oilers stormed off. Many were absorbed Wednesday watching the Houston Astro playoff game, hoping their baseball team might eventually make it into the World Series.

But for civic leaders who endured snub after snub while pursuing an NFL franchise, the news was pure honey.

“This was a victory for Houston,” said billionaire Bob McNair, who agreed to pay $700 million to lure a team to the city. “Houston hasn’t received the proper respect it should have, so it makes it especially sweet.”

Arriving at Houston’s Hobby Airport on Wednesday from Atlanta--where NFL owners had met--McNair clutched a football under one arm and a helmet under the other. “It’s certainly more than I ever anticipated . . . but I think we can have a successful football team. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t have submitted the bid,” he said.

Houston Mayor Lee P. Brown, who got word of the decision during a City Council meeting, also sounded triumphant.

“Today we scored a touchdown for our fans, for our community, and for our economy,” he said. “So I’d say, welcome football back to our city, and let’s play.”

For many, the deal signified an end to months of indignities at the hands of the NFL, and a chance to join the crowd of U.S. cities hoping to bolster their profiles with big-ticket sports facilities.

“This is an opportunity to put Houston back on the map,” said Houston Sports Authority chairman Billy Burge. “It is my hometown and I like to see the spotlight on Houston. It’s a big investment, but we’re going to have a wonderful stadium and even a Super Bowl.”

Delighted as he was, however, football fan Cluth couldn’t help but think of the price paid to woo and win a new team.

“Seven-hundred million dollars is an obscene price to pay,” he said. In addition to money from private investors, $195 million in county and civic funding also will flow into the project, helping to push the entire deal to more than $1 billion.

But Cluth wasn’t precisely complaining.

“Football is something in our society that takes on a lot of importance,” he said. “A lot of money gets thrown around.”

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Times staff writer Claudia Kolker in Tulsa, Okla., contributed to this story.