Do you think Austin should get a profesional sports team? (fit in, moving)

[theloneranger]

Originally Posted by AlwayzRight

Why couldnt Austin compete with the Cowboys? The Texans do.....and do pretty well.....I would say a Dallas/Austin rivalry would be pretty good. Heck Florida has 3 NFL teams..why not Texas. Austin would LOVE to have an NFL team. Trust me alot of those Longhorn fans would be an Austin NFL fan as well.

The Texans have NOWHERE near the support the Cowboys do. The Cowboys are consistently the most popular NFL team in the nation and consistently sell the most merchandise of any team--even when they stink. Much of the Cowboys support comes from Texas, including Austin and San Antonio, which don't have NFL teams.

Austin couldn't compete with people who would still be Cowboys fans like they have been all their life. Houston hasn't completely embraced the Texans by a long shot--there are quite a few Titans fans there and there are a whole bunch of Cowboys fans there.

Plus, Jacksonville is an incredibly weak NFL franchise. They sell the least number of tickets and merchandise. A large reason for this is the market's small size--which is still 500k more than Austin. Both Tampa Bay and Miami are more than double Austin's size (South Florida is nearly five times as large).

If Austin and San Antonio both get behind the franchise, it has a chance. However, SA people wouldn't give up the Cowboys to play second-fiddle to an Austin franchise. SA is a HUGE market for Jerry Jones.

Also, an Austin NFL team would have to get into the NFL East with the Cowboys to develop a rivalry--fat chance doing that. The Texans would have a better shot as the Dallas-Houston city rivalry is much bigger. However, playing each other only once every four years, there's little chance for one to emerge.

[theloneranger]

Originally Posted by AlwayzRight

what if it doesnt require rasing taxes to build a stadium?

Who could afford to pony up that cash for an expansion team? World-class stadia today cost around a billion dollars. Most people, even those who can afford professional sports teams, don't have a billion extra dollars to put into a stadium.

[AlwayzRight]

Originally Posted by theloneranger

The Texans have NOWHERE near the support the Cowboys do. The Cowboys are consistently the most popular NFL team in the nation and consistently sell the most merchandise of any team--even when they stink. Much of the Cowboys support comes from Texas, including Austin and San Antonio, which don't have NFL teams.

Austin couldn't compete with people who would still be Cowboys fans like they have been all their life. Houston hasn't completely embraced the Texans by a long shot--there are quite a few Titans fans there and there are a whole bunch of Cowboys fans there.

Plus, Jacksonville is an incredibly weak NFL franchise. They sell the least number of tickets and merchandise. A large reason for this is the market's small size--which is still 500k more than Austin. Both Tampa Bay and Miami are more than double Austin's size (South Florida is nearly five times as large).

If Austin and San Antonio both get behind the franchise, it has a chance. However, SA people wouldn't give up the Cowboys to play second-fiddle to an Austin franchise. SA is a HUGE market for Jerry Jones.

Also, an Austin NFL team would have to get into the NFL East with the Cowboys to develop a rivalry--fat chance doing that. The Texans would have a better shot as the Dallas-Houston city rivalry is much bigger. However, playing each other only once every four years, there's little chance for one to emerge.

Trust me 16 games or more a year in a 50, 000-60,000 seat stadium with SO MANY people in a 3 hour radius who LOVE FOOTBALL would be SOLD OUT EVERY Sunday....easily. NFL is king. If markets such as Green Bay can have a team....Austin could...easilu.

[jobert]

There are other cities as large or larger than Austin that do not have teams: Omaha, El Paso, LOS ANGELES, etc.

If the market isn't there, it isn't there. Austin's lack of market can be attributed to the fact that people here tend to not park themselves in front their TVs

[mimimomx3]

Originally Posted by AlwayzRight

what if it doesnt require rasing taxes to build a stadium?

Oh, please. I wouldn't believe ONE WORD of this coming out of any corporate entity. Never. Taxpayers would end up paying for a coporate junket/welfare by the ton.

[hoffdano]

Originally Posted by AlwayzRight

Trust me 16 games or more a year in a 50, 000-60,000 seat stadium with SO MANY people in a 3 hour radius who LOVE FOOTBALL would be SOLD OUT EVERY Sunday....easily. NFL is king. If markets such as Green Bay can have a team....Austin could...easilu.

Nope. I do not trust you. First of all there would not be 16 games. Only 8 regular season home games. Maybe 2 crappy preseason games.

Green Bay has decades of history and fanatical fans. They are also the only game in Wisconsin.

And it is ludicrous to think any stadium could be built without a huge tax bill.

[theloneranger]

Originally Posted by AlwayzRight

Trust me 16 games or more a year in a 50, 000-60,000 seat stadium with SO MANY people in a 3 hour radius who LOVE FOOTBALL would be SOLD OUT EVERY Sunday....easily. NFL is king. If markets such as Green Bay can have a team....Austin could...easilu.

Also, 50-60k ain't gonna cut it for the NFL. You need at least 80k to be financially viable.

NFL is not king in Austin. Most Austinites care far more that UT wins than any NFL team wins.

Green Bay has a team because it's been there for almost 100 years. They also shared games with County Stadium in Milwaukee for many years. Neither Milwaukee nor Madison has an NFL team.

Austin would only draw from one other large city, San Antonio, and there is NO way that Austin would get a team before San Antonio, so they couldn't compete with them either. Waco is the next largest city in the area, but being equidistant to Dallas, I believe the Waco folks would continue to do what their daddies and granddaddies have done and support the Cowboys. They wouldn't get support from El Paso, either, because El Paso is closer to Phoenix.

Austin can not support an NFL team. They would be a worse version of Jacksonville--in an area which loves football and supports it but isn't large enough to support an NFL team, especially with all the competition in the area.

[calel]

Originally Posted by jobert

There are other cities as large or larger than Austin that do not have teams: Omaha, El Paso, LOS ANGELES, etc.

LA has the Lakers, the Clippers, and the Dodgers...


I don't think Austin needs a Pro team. We've already got three pro basketball franchises, two major league baseball, and two pro football teams in Texas. Austin has a top-ranked college football team and a AAA baseball team within spitting distance. I think we'll be a-ok picking and choosing our loyalties to neighboring city's teams.

[atxcio]

Originally Posted by theloneranger

Also, 50-60k ain't gonna cut it for the NFL. You need at least 80k to be financially viable.

Most NFL stadiums are smaller than 80K. Only the Redskins and new Cowboys stadium have 80K capacity. The Colts stadium, built in 2008, has 63K. Reliant in Houston is 69K. Stadiums of the NFL-Stadium Comparisons (http://www.stadiumsofnfl.com/capacity.htm - broken link)

However, I doubt Austin could fill a 60K stadium for an NFL team.. (out of 16, only 8 or so would be home games, though). I mean, Austin doesn't even sell out the Erwin center during the rare big-name concerts. UT games are full because of a huge base of alumni both inside and outside Austin.

The primary reason we'll never get an NBA or NFL team is TV market. We're much smaller than SA's market, and we're also pinned in between Waco/Temple/Killeen TV market to the north and SA's market to the south. So we're not regional at all, like other markets such as OKC. To get a viewing audience big enough for the NFL, it's going to have to come entirely from the Austin-San Marcos area... and for that local audience to be big enough, we'd need a population of about 3M. Almost double what we have now.

[robino2001]

This thread shouldn't even be a pipe dream for anyone.

SA had a shot at an NFL team but Jerry Jones will not allow it. Austin would never get one either. Even precious UT had empty sections at every game last year.

SA had a shot at the Marlins but that fell by the wayside. RR draws, what, 7500ish per game... The Express are fine enough for baseball in the area.

The NHL will not expand in the south anymore - if anything they'll contract southern teams.

The NBA is obvious with SA having the Spurs.

Embrace the teams you have, Austin. You have the Toros, Express, Aztex and (soon to be) Stars. We try to go to all of the local games as often as we can and enjoy them just as much as the major leagues.