Houston to bid for Super Bowl LI (UPDATE: Houston lands 2017 Super Bowl!)

Among that specific group, or generally? I'd wager, given what a generally apathetic sports town Houston is and it's transient nature, that the vast majority of citizens have zero knowledge/attachment/care for the Dome.

I mean, the Astros were having trouble selling out playoff games in 1998 (with one of the greatest teams in the city's history); the Oilers were three years gone by that point... So the Dome has been objectively irrelevant for at least... 17 years, possibly as much as 20 - and let's not forget that the final 2-3 years of the Oilers' tenure was marred by constant talk of how decrepit and outdated a facility it was. So we may be looking at a good 25 years since the Dome had any sort of hey day...

So, in order to have legitimately fond memories of the Dome, we're essentially talking about people who have lived here since the early 90s (or prior). I just... I have a hard time believing that group is anything other than a relatively small minority.

 

Apparently there are actual alligators in the latter... people have snuck in to take pictures of the land/park and how creepy it looks.

 

Or broken down trucks in our front lawns...

 

On 1960? I worked there summers home from Sam in '87 and '88. If I never see another bumper boat as long as I live it will be too soon. But I do owe my "Gaunlet" skills to that place.

 

Can you provide sources for the votes on those stadiums? I can't find any. (also curious about Toyota Center, if you can find it)

I'm not arguing that the vote shouldn't have failed, I'm arguing that the amount of "yes" votes are staggering considering how awful of an idea and plan it was.

 

Upgrade it

Similar situation to the Oilers. Instead of attendance, it was the vote. The team's performance wasn't good enough, so the customer made their decision.. which led to the ultimate decision, termination of the product.

You justified AW's demise so well, surely you agree with Mr Adams too.

Speaking of "the silliest of notions", have you met anyone who compared retail stores to a world famous stadium that's completely indigenous to a specific city, lately?

 

Adams didn't leave because of poor attendance...to the contrary, his whole argument was that attendance was bigger, ultimately after walk-up sales, than what the Astrodome could accomodate.

I wrote a paper about the issue of building a new stadium for the Oilers in college. Adams hired Coopers & Lybrand to compile a report showing how the Oilers had sold at 110% capacity...and he needed a new stadium with luxury boxes and enough seats to accommodate the fans.

There was a ton more to it than just that. Adams burned every bridge in town. He lied to the city and the public saying the Rockets were totally on board to move into and play in his new "BudDome"....even though the Rockets weren't remotely interested in playing in a dome. He didn't move away because of fan support.

 

And Lanier offered him an outdoor football only stadium, but Bud didn't want that. Couldn't lord it over Les and the Rockets with an outdoor stadium.

And fan support didn't drop until the move to Nashpatch was a done deal and he had to lame duck it for a couple of seasons.

 

His report said that they sold out at either 108 or 110% capacity for 8 straight years. Walk up sales were huge for that team. Randall's would always pledge to buy the excess tickets if all the tickets hadn't been sold by the blackout deadline.....but my understanding is they only had to do that like 1 or 2 times ever.

 

Bud Adams literally began threatening to move the team in the 1960s. He damn-near moved them to Jacksonville in the mid-80s. Adams' greed is what drove the Oilers out of town; there was never a public vote of any kind. Not in the 90s during his flirtation with Tennessee - and that's in large part because we were still paying for the "yes" vote in '87 to upgrade the Dome to his standards.

So, no - not similar in any way.

WADR, you don't know what you're talking about. Attendance was not an issue; lack of luxury suites (which were not applicable to the NFL's revenue sharing; thus, 100% profit for Bud Adams) were the issue. The Oilers oversold the Dome's capacity in the late 80s/early 90s... In fact, that was one of Adams' guiding (public) issues: he needed a bigger stadium to accommodate demand. I mean... he wasn't asking to build a *smaller* stadium...

Nope. And neither have you. I very obviously used longstanding local institutions to illustrate that a lot of things - like AstroWorld - not the Astrodome (which was literally never mentioned in DBrunk01's post) - fade away with little to no effect on the city's ability to move forward.

 

Right, I said *instead of attendance, it was the "no new stadium vote".

Bud could've gotten his stadium had the Oilers won a championship. They didn't.

Team performance (park performance) wasn't good enough for the costumer, thus an ultimate decision was made.

Don't recall that at all

 

Indeed. I (unsuccessfully) chased a lot of girls there... Did you grow up on that side of town?

 

LOVED Games People Play. I got my first real make-out session (with boob squeeze) behind that waterslide in the 7th grade. Great mammaries...er, memories. Or both, actually.

I can still smell the gas fumes from the bumper boats.

 

I was mostly just addressing the "private company" portion of your comment. I realize that other than that we pretty much agreed. I just got on a little roll with my comments and didn't point out that not everything I was saying was replying to your statement. My bad.

 

Fair enough. Actually, to be more specific, I do hear people wonder aloud why there isn't a major theme park in the Houston area and how it's ridiculous. So, not Astroworld specifically, but a theme park yes.

As for whether it matches up to the level of a professional sports team, you are of course correct there. Professional sports teams and especially the NFL, have much much more impact.

 

You are stupendously misinformed on this subject.

 

EcoQuest Adventure Park is coming soon...ask ima and max for details.

 

You're right. After I wrote it I realized what you meant. I meant a private company as opposed to government. Not a privately-held company, necessarily. But I get what you meant.

 

IT'S GONNA BE HUUUGE!

 

You've already shown your *youth* previously on other topics, and you couldn't be more mis-guided, naive, and flat-out wrong about this.

Houston was done with Bud Adams... if you were acutely aware of his actions/persona and how many bridges he'd already burned with city leadership over the years, you'd know that. He didn't have a single 'friend' that was willing to back him here... and this is somebody who had been in the high-profile community for over 40 years.

Houston was eventually prepared/motivated to build stadiums for their owners who weren't complete assholes... but they weren't going to give in to Bud (who in hindsight, had he gotten what he wanted... it would have been a TERRIBLE venue for the city/team, and he'd likely be squawking again around the mid 2000's).