guy, its for crowd noise. i do not know what you want someone to step forward and tell you.. IT IS BECAUSE OF CROWD NOISE.. period:grin: the crowd noise isnt going to cover wr's and plug gaps in the run game. it will make some teams expend time and energy relaying plays and you will see a rise in delay of game penalties and timeouts.. also having the sun on the field makes for a terrible contrast for home viewers.
i havent read the entire thread. I did see the rodeo mentioned. If it hasnt been noted the rodeo is more important to houston financially than pro football
I want someone to step forward and say it instead of just ignoring it. If they say the roof will be open when the temp is between 50 and 80 and it's 70 friggin degrees it should be open. Honestly, it's pretty disappointing. Dang, we sat out there tailgating in the beautiful weather, then had to go indoors to watch FOOTBALL! It just seemed WRONG. Houston doesn't have that many days like that. Kubiak is from houston, he should know that! The game was awesome, and the roof didn't spoil my fun at all. My wife complaining that she didn't get to tan while watching was frustration, though. lol I know the crowd noise is important. Every time we played the colts, my fingers would be pruned by the end of the game from whistling so much, however, my wife and I look forward to the few games where the roof will be open and this was one of them!
That's also the reason for the people who get the sun the whole time, you pretty much get toasted on one side of the stadium. The designers never thought about the sun light and how much would get into the stadium. The rodeo will always stay closed for the stage/video etc...
If having that damn roof closed means a Super Bowl for this city because the crowd noise gives the team an edge...then lock than damn roof closed. 10-1....STFU people....10-1...... 'nough said......
I don't care either way cause I really don't go to Texans games (and honestly would rather watch at home anyways), but watching the KC and Denver game today I think can definitely prove the point that an outdoor stadium can be plenty loud. At this point though, I don't think you should do anything that messes with the team's mojo.
I meant the decision to have retractable roof for the stadium. If we see the roof open at anytime this season, it will be a perfect day and the team would have locked up the playoffs. But as long as crowd noise can be a factor, I doubt we will see it open in games where the win can determine playoff seat.
This is one of the sorriest threads I've ever seen. "Oh my god, our football team is a superbowl contender, but we could be better if they'd only open the roof so birds could land on Foster's shoulder after he scores a touchdown." The **** is wrong with y'all?
Bump A roof unused: Texans punt on opening their stadium to the elements Dom Capers was desperate for a win. So ahead of the 2005 Houston Texans home opener, with game-time temperatures forecast in the low 90s, the head coach asked team officials to keep the Reliant Stadium roof open. The heat, he reasoned, would roast the Pittsburgh Steelers in their black jerseys. Alas, no. The Steelers were indeed on fire, but not in the way Capers hoped. They sacked quarterback David Carr eight times, beating the Texans 27-7. Capers would be sacked at season's end, too, after the team finished with a record of 2-14. But the legacy of his let's-roast-the-Steelers decision lives on. After the game, fans were merciless in their complaints about the heat - writing the Chronicle, calling radio and television stations and, most of all, calling the Texans. "We've had a lot of communication with our fans," team owner Bob McNair understated later in the season. After the Pittsburgh game, the team developed a roof policy that states in part, "We will consider opening the roof at Reliant Stadium when the game time temperature is projected to be between 50 and 80 degrees." The policy also says when there is a good chance of rain during a game, the roof will be closed. It's a policy that might as well have not been written at all. Since its inception, according to a Chronicle analysis of weather during games in which the Texans have closed their roof, the team has adhered to its own policy just half of the time. That is, in 22 of the 46 closed-roof, regular season and playoff contests since the Pittsburgh game, the game time temperature was between 50 and 80 degrees and there was not a good chance of rain. Team officials say they're simply catering to public desire. "It's kind of a juggling act of trying to keep 70,000 people happy," said Kevin Cooper, a spokesman for the Texans. Excluding the 2008 season, when damage from Hurricane Ike forced the team to open its roof for all games, the Texans have closed their roof in 57 of 80 regular season games, or 71 percent of the time. The team also has opened the roof less often as it has become more competitive. Cooper firmly denied that noise and a desire for a stronger home field advantage factor into the team's roof decisions. Nevertheless, during seasons in which the Texans have had a winning record (2009, 2011 and 2012) the team has closed the roof for 92 percent of regular season games. Last season, the team's best ever, the Texans did not open the roof at all. This Saturday the Texans play their first home game of the season, a preseason contest against the Dolphins that begins at 7 p.m. Expect a closed roof with game-time temperatures likely in the mid- to upper-80s. It wasn't always this way. During the first season the Texans opened their roof for all but three of their eight home regular season games. Final bill: $449 million At the time the team's senior vice president, Steve Patterson, bragged that the roof would only be closed during substantial thunderstorms because "football is an open-air sport." Patterson explained that the roof, the first of its kind at an NFL stadium, was added because the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo, the facility's other primary tenant, is held in the winter. The decision to incorporate a retractable roof in Reliant Stadium's design, which at the time was unprecedented for a football stadium, helped propel a nearly 50 percent increase in the cost of construction. In late 1998, as he began to put a hard sell on the National Football League to obtain a franchise, Houston businessman Bob McNair signed a letter of agreement with the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority for a $310 million stadium to open in 2002. The sports authority, authorized by voters, collects hotel and car rental taxes to support the construction of sports venues in Houston. By late 1999 the anticipated cost of the stadium, now including a retractable roof, rose to $367 million. And by the time it was completed for the inaugural Texans season, Reliant Stadium cost $449 million. Of that, all but $50 million came in some form or fashion from taxpayers. McNair also pays $6 million annually in rent to offset some of the sports authority's bonds. Beyond estimating "tens of millions" of dollars, neither sports authority, Harris County officials nor the stadium's architect, Dennis Wellner, could say precisely how much the addition of a retractable roof increased the stadium's cost. This is because there was not only the incremental cost of a system to move the structure, but also far higher steel and concrete costs to support the heavier structure. Taxpayers lose Critics of the stadium's high costs say the now largely unused roof is just another example of public money used to enrich sports team owners. County treasurer Orlando Sanchez says Houston was among the communities swept up in a wave of requests for new football, basketball and baseball facilities in the 1990s and 2000s. "The wave comes and goes, and taxpayers are left with the disaster," he said. "Houston and other municipalities around the country are left to struggle to service the debt as major league sports grow richer every year." According to Forbes, the value of the Houston Texans has nearly doubled since McNair paid $700 million for the team in 1999. In its 2013 list, the publication said the Texans value was $1.305 billion, fifth highest among NFL teams. Meanwhile the sports authority, which also financed Minute Maid Park and Toyota Center for a combined cost of about half that of Reliant Stadium, has fallen on challenging financial times. In the last decade the sports authority had to borrow $26.5 million from the Harris County Toll Road Authority to pay back a loan, and more recently it has been sued by MBIA, the firm that insures its $1 billion in bonds. MBIA argued that the sports authority needs to raise more revenues to increase its financial reserves. The sports authority, in turn, said MBIA is the entity with financial difficulties, which stem from a downgrade of MBIA's investment rating due to risky real estate investments. A judge threw out the suit in April. Such entanglements could have been avoided had taxpayers not been forced to pay so much of the burden of new stadiums, said Paul Bettencourt, a former tax-assessor collector for the county. "One of the reasons the Sports Authority is in continuing financial jeopardy is that they overpaid for items at the stadiums when they were built," he said. "The best example I can point to is the authority paid for a 'convertible car' instead of a 'hardtop' that has rarely been used at Reliant Stadium. Look up at the roof next time you are in Reliant and realize that the taxpayers paid for 5 million dollars of bonds each time it's been opened during the last five years." Spoiler
I went to the buffalo game in 06. The roof was open. Slight chill in the air, but it felt like football.
Didn't Kubiak already say that they prefer the roof to be closed? Just as Capers got the roof to be open for a game where it shouldn't, Kubiak has continued to lobby for it to be closed for games where it should. Once the precedence was set that the coaches/team controlled the roof policy, there's nothing the fans can really do or say to change things. I used to argue for the roof to be open plenty enough over the years, but if the team prefers to play its home games in a certain environment (an environment the coach feels they play the best in), then there won't be much change in the roof handling until the regime changes. Credit to the chronicle for going out on a limb with the attempt to be somewhat "controversial" in calling out a local favorite team. At least the team can't hide behind the 50-80 rule anymore when it comes to why they don't open the roof. They should also stop spouting that its all about the fans. At least they finally got field-turf for non-Texans games.
Even though the fans probably enjoy the roof being open when it isn't dangerously hot outside, keeping it closed makes a lot of sense due to the horrendous shadows when the roof is open for noon games. It seems as though the stadium is just oriented wrong which leads to some of the biggest complaints I have of Reliant: the shadows are bad, we can't grow grass inside (even with the roof open), the grass trays are dangerous and look bad on TV, etc. I'm not sure how the engineers didn't catch that (or why it was overlooked) in their simulations/calculations. All that being said, the regular season can't get here soon enough!
Shadows aren't that bad. Go back to the 2008 season and complaints of "shadows" for all the open roof games were non-existant. No matter how you "orient" the stadium, there will always be sun/shade due to the structure being a narrow rectangular box that sits high off the ground level. If you're complaining about the TV shadow issues, every single Cowboy game over the last 30 years had "shadows" in Texas Stadium that were far worse than Reliant... camera technology has evolved enough since then to mitigate most of that. Tray system is bad... but what made it worse was when the field was getting torn up repeatedly for HS and college games on days leading up to Texans games. This led to replacing individual trays here/there and leading to the field looking like crap. The new field-turf they purchased should eliminate this problem... grass field will only be used for Texans games, and should be fairly consistent from game to game.
Reliant stadium was a ripoff for the city of houston. 6 mil a year for rent for bob when he get 10 mil a year just for the naming rights?
The price to pay to be a part of the NFL again. Also, I'm pretty sure all the sports owners in the city of a cushy set-up for their tax-payer built stadiums... with Les probably having the cushiest.
Of course it was. Every ****ing stadium is a ripoff that makes the ultra-rich owners even more rich at the expense of the city/fans. Except for Lambeau, that is.
