The city of Houston has potential. With the right training, developed habits and etiquette, the Bayou City could definitely pass as one of the greatest sports towns in America.
All the ingredients are present. For starters, each of the three major professional sports is represented. The Astros, Rockets and Texans compose three of the more profitable franchises in the country.
The college sports scene showcases a Rice baseball program that is always considered among the best in the nation. In football, the Owls finished at an astonishing 10-3 last season, while the Cougars produced one of the most explosive offenses in the country en route to an 8-5 record. Both of these teams won bowl games, ending long droughts without a bowl victory.
Houston area high schools are almost always in the state football and basketball championships. Katy, Yates, Hightower and the Cy-Fair ISD schools will vouch for that argument.
When it comes to sports, there are few cities in America that have the venues, sheer numbers in terms of programs or overall success that Houston possesses.
However, it takes more than expensive stadiums and winning teams to be considered one of America’s greatest sports towns. There is a category that real sports towns, such as Boston, New York and Los Angeles, trump Houston in every year. Unfortunately, there’s no other way to put it. It’s the fan department.
Now this should not be taken as an attack against the entire city. Houston has its faithful sports followers – the fans who feel guilty when they miss games on television.
These types of fans don’t dress up in expensive designer clothes and sit down all night, sipping on champagne while worrying about what other people are thinking about them. If they have the means to do so, the faithful sports followers go to the game in jeans and a jersey or T-shirt. They make noise, drink beer and give weird looks to those who appear more interested in a text message conversation than the action on the field or the court. Houston, like every other city, has these types of fans.
It, however, does not have the swagger and the air of sports superiority that accompanies the atmosphere of the sports towns mentioned before. In places like Boston, L.A. and The Big Apple, the sports faithful outnumber the fair-weather or pseudo-fans. Leaving a close game early to beat traffic will result in looks of disapproval and quite possibly shunning.
Despite the Knicks’ inability to field a winning team in about eight years, Madison Square Garden still sells out. The fans get there early to heckle the other team – and sometimes the Knicks when they deserve it – and they don’t leave until the game is over. They let the Knicks have it when they play horrible, yet on the winning occasions, they are just as quick to praise.
In true sports towns, fans take pride in their team’s success. At times, this might rub foreigners as being cocky, but there’s a difference.
For example, on March 19, 2008, the Rockets’ record-setting 22-game winning steak was snapped in a 94-74 loss to the eventual world champion Boston Celtics. By the time the final buzzer sounded, 75 percent of the arena was empty.
One-fourth of the crowd – the true fans – remained regardless of the blowout loss to give the Rockets, who undoubtedly deserved it, a standing ovation as it exited the court.
There’s a possibility that if the same thing had gone on in Boston, Celtics fans would have made early exits to save 15 minutes on the commute home. That possibility, however, would have been remote. Some people mistake it for chauvinism, when in actuality it’s just pride. Boston fans would have stayed to pay reverence to the Celtics because the fans have pride.
This same citywide pride leads to a swagger. This swagger contributes to an atmosphere that is unmistakable – the atmosphere of a true sports town.
Meanwhile, Houston is playing catch up.
