San Antonio is too SMALL...according to the man in charge of the NFL

[Opinionater]

IMHO, San Antonio is a Dallas Cowboy's city and always will be and that is why SA will not get an NFL team.

[cherylsteele]

Also, I heard on some local radio stations here (Houston radio) that San Antonio could "ONLY SELL" 100K tickets for the three games

The whole thing with this is that the Saints are waiting to hear from season ticket holders and are reserviing those tickets for them as long as possible....that is what I heard.

[hussker]

The whole thing with this is that the Saints are waiting to hear from season ticket holders and are reserviing those tickets for them as long as possible....that is what I heard.

See... you know too! That is why I said "WE" all know...That is not being reported fairly, just like the press always does.

They do not just slam politicians ya know!

[Vashner]

Someone make a video of the Commish like getting his balls kicked over and over and play team america BEEP yea as the soundtrack...

One of those ymtnd things.

[cherylsteele]

See... you know too! That is why I said "WE" all know...That is not being reported fairly, just like the press always does.

They do not just slam politicians ya know!

This is a unique situation and more accurate attendence figures won't be know until a few days before game day.

[2pac]

Since we are including SMSA, the following cities are bigger than Jacksonville (1.2mil) and they have no sports teams...excpet columbus who was awarded an NHl after the Jacksonville recieved the Jaguars.

Greensboro/Winston-Salem 1.3mil
Raleigh-Durham 1.3mil
Austin 1.5mil....has Longhorns' stadium
Columbus, Oh. (at the time) 1.6mil....has OSU stadium

No one ever mentions Honolulu, they play the Pro-Bowl there...it is not as big though.

As you can see...size means nothing.

Are you that ing dumb?

The state of Ohio has the Bengals and Browns. The whole city of Columbus goes to support the Buckeyes. (100k plus every week) Thats a lot to contend with.

Raleigh-Durham is multiple cities, but it also supports TWO major universities and is near the Bobcats, Panthers.
Greensboro/Winston-Salem - same in deal. All these small cities are near each other and they got a football team in Charlotte the same year the Jags came about. You think the NFL is dumb enough to put two new football teams in North Carolina?

Population is 1.3 in Austin, and they all support a major university. City is built around the university, plus nearby football teams in Houston and the very supported Dallas Cowboys.

[MannyIsGod]

People just refuse to admit it. They just don't get it.

[hussker]

This is a unique situation and more accurate attendence figures won't be know until a few days before game day.

Very true indeed. Lies, damn lies, statistics... Twain or Disraeli (pick the one you think said it.)

The bottom line is, the NFL is against SA getting a team. Period.

[exstatic]

Enjoy the three games. I have tickets for game one, and may attend game two, as well. That's all we're getting folks. PT has already set up a meeting to schedule next season in a ing college stadium...that's how much he doesn't want the Saints in SA. We're not dealing with Al Davis here, folks. Tom Benson will toe the line.

[cherylsteele]

Are you that ing dumb?

The state of Ohio has the Bengals and Browns. The whole city of Columbus goes to support the Buckeyes. (100k plus every week) Thats a lot to contend with.

Raleigh-Durham is multiple cities, but it also supports TWO major universities and is near the Bobcats, Panthers.
Greensboro/Winston-Salem - same in deal. All these small cities are near each other and they got a football team in Charlotte the same year the Jags came about. You think the NFL is dumb enough to put two new football teams in North Carolina?

Population is 1.3 in Austin, and they all support a major university. City is built around the university, plus nearby football teams in Houston and the very supported Dallas Cowboys.

You said population in your initial statement....not who supported who.

Sure columbus is a buxckeye town....but you did say population is why Jacksonville got a team....you made no exceptions.

Raleigh-Durham supports colleges...so why have the Saints in Baton Rouge? They support LSU.

Bobcats were not even there at the time. Panthers came in at the same time, that is true.

Austin does have Arena football.


BTW....the obscenisties are not necessary...it is not needed to prove a point.

Would I like the Saints here? Sure. I am a cowboy fan but dispise Jerry Jones, his egos is what killed the Cowboys of the 90's and now have them stuck in mediocrity.

The Texans just plain stink...showing little signs of improvement.

[TheWriter]

Nashville and Memphis both larger than Jacksonville did not have any pro sports teams in 1995.

[cherylsteele]

People just refuse to admit it. They just don't get it.

I get it.....just don't like it.....I am h=just voicing my opinion....I know full well that it means little or nothing except to me and those who read it and agree with me.

I just think that San Antonio should have a chance to show it can support two pro teams. At this point San Antonio is a much better alternative than Baton Rouge. The players prefer SA over BR, it gives them at least some time of feeling of a home field. They have several displaced fans here in the area as well as Houston and Dallas. SA is a more centralized location for then to come see their hometown team play.

Tagliabue was the NFL lawyer in the USFL lawsuit as well, and I think he holds that against us as well.

[CharlieMac]

A lot of South Texas would support an NFL franchise here. These country bumpkins have money and those without money (my family) would pawn to make an NFL game on a weekly basis.

Tags crushed a lot of hopes with that statement.

[2pac]

Tennessee would have gotten an expansion team if Bud Adams hadnt already signed a relocation agreement in 1995. (16 Nov 95)

[Vashner]

http://conanisannflref.ytmnd.com/

http://snitskypunt.ytmnd.com/

[2pac]

The players prefer SA over BR, it gives them at least some time of feeling of a home field.

The players wanted SA because Benson worked out an agreement to practice there and so they moved their families there when they evacuated.

They have several displaced fans here in the area as well as Houston and Dallas.

A freakin ton of NO residents are in BR.


You rantings are increasingly illogical. So Tags has it out for SA?

[TheWriter]

The players wanted SA because Benson worked out an agreement to practice there and so they moved their families there when they evacuated.

Excactly. The players and coaches have found housing and found schools for their kids.

So playing in the Dome is the truest sense of "home field advantage." Playing in BR requires them to fly over there days in advance meaning they'll be away from their families.

[2pac]

Excactly. The players and coaches have found housing and found schools for their kids.

So playing in the Dome is the truest sense of "home field advantage." Playing in BR requires them to fly over there days in advance meaning they'll be away from their families.

Football teams dont really flys days in advance. Practice M-F, fly Sat meeting, game Sun.

[cherylsteele]

Tennessee would have gotten an expansion team if Bud Adams hadnt already signed a relocation agreement in 1995. (16 Nov 95)

You don't know that for sure just like you have no idea wether or not we could support the NFL in SA. There were no owners coming forward that I know of to buy a expansion team. They built the stadium in Nashville to lure a relocating franchise.

If size mattered then LA should have a team and not Houston.

So Tags has it out for SA?

It sure seems that way....along with Jerry Jones.....and possibly you, probably becuase you are from Houston and just dislike San Antonio for whatever reason.

You have 3 NBA teams in Texas and are quite successful....the NFL should /could/can work as well.

[Marcus Bryant]

What's the point in moving a franchise to SA? You aren't going to get more Texans to watch NFL football or Texans to watch more football, as the case may be. It's already been demonstrated that two NFL franchises in Texas, if that, are needed to gain viewers in football mad Texas.

Perhaps I'm off, but I'd suspect that a franchise in LA would be worth a couple of hundred mil more than one in good old San Antonio de Bexar. Some of you are counting perhaps a little too much on the civic pride of Mr. Benson. I don't know about you, but for $200 to 300 million I'd forget SA ever existed.

Maybe Chamber of Commerce's price is substantially higher. If true, at least he'd have an excuse for his stupidity.

[TheWriter]

Football teams dont really flys days in advance. Practice M-F, fly Sat meeting, game Sun.

Exactly. When they play in the city, they leave their home the day of the game.

Hense the home field advantage.

[samikeyp]

He's Jerry Jones bed buddy... they do coke at the dallas White house together I bet....

Careful, your anti-Cowboy bias is showing. If you ever followed football, especially in the 90's, you will know that JJ is NOT one of Tags' favorite owners. With all the problems Jones has caused the commish over signing endorsement deals with the compe ors of NFL sponsors (Nike, Pepsi, etc.) to line his own pockets, Jones and Tags are not buddies.

I do agree with you Cheryl....I would imagine JJ does have objections to a team in SA since this is a huge Cowboys area but its for those reasons and money, not because of loyalty to Tagliabue.

[NZHayden]

that nfl guy sounds like a complete ass

[Mark in Austin]

PT’s comments shouldn’t surprise anybody. The NFL would be crazy to support SA when Los Angeles is available at any time, much less given the current situation. Here’s why: The two main indicators to look at are Nielsen Media Research ranking of TV homes in a DMA (Designated Market Area) and to a lesser extent, MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) population. A distant third from the League’s perspective is corporate/fan support. The NFL cares much, much more about ad revenue (DMA & MSA rankings) than luxury box sales support (corporate base), which is more important to the individual owners.

When you look at rankings of the number of TV homes in a DMA, the picture becomes clear. (This is the ranking that the networks for the most part base their advertising fees on. The basic idea here is that the higher the total number of TV homes in local markets, generally the more $$$$ the networks can charge for commercial airtime during NFL games. The more money the networks can make, the more $$$$$$$ they are willing to pay the league for the rights to broadcast the games.)

Looking at the rankings, there are four NFL cities with a lower DMA rank than San Antonio’s #37 with 760,410 TV Homes (0.69% of US). Only one is a recent expansion franchise.

# 37 – San Antonio 760,410 (0.69% of total TV homes in the US)
# 43 – New Orleans 672,150 (0.61% of US)
# 49 – Buffalo 644,430 (0.59% of US)
# 52 – Jacksonville 624,220 (0.57% of US)
# 69 – Green Bay 432,810 (0.39% of US)

There are 9 cities ranked higher than San Antonio that don’t have NFL teams:

# 2 – Los Angeles 5,536,430 (5.02% of total TV homes in the US)
#19 – Sacramento 1,345,820 (1.22% of US)
#20 – Orlando 1,345,700 (1.22% of US)
#23 – Portland 1,099,890 (1.00 % of US)
#29 – Raleigh-Durham 985,200 (0.89% of US)
#32 – Columbus 890,770 (0.80% of US)
#33 – Milwaukee 880,390 (0.80% of US)
#35 – Greenville 815,460 (0.74% of US)
#36 – Salt Lake City 810,830 (0.74% of US)
# 37 – San Antonio 760,410 (0.69% of US)

__________________________________________________ _____________


Looking at the MSA rankings, there are 7 NFL cities with a lower MSA than San Antonio’s # 29 rank at 1.7 million:

# 29 - San Antonio: 1.7 million
# 34 - Indianapolis: 1.5 million
#37 - Charlotte: 1.3 million
# 38 - New Orleans: 1.3 million
# 39 - Nashville: 1.3 million
# 42 - Buffalo: 1.1 million
# 45 - Jacksonville: 1.1 million
# 152 - Green Bay: .28 million

There are five MSA's that are ranked higher than San Antonio that don’t have an NFL team:

# 2 - Los Angeles: 12.3 million
# 13 - Riverside: 3.2 million
# 25 - Portland: 1.9 million
# 27 – Sacramento: 1.7 million
# 28 – San Jose: 1.7 million
# 29 - San Antonio: 1.7 million

__________________________________________________ ___________

When you look at the numbers and see that Los Angeles has a 4.2 times the total number of TV homes and 7.2 times the population of San Antonio, there should be no doubt where the NFL is focused on going next. And even with LA off the board, both Sacramento and Orlando have almost 80% more TV homes than San Antonio, and Portland has over 40% more than SA. It's not like San Antonio is the clear-cut number two choice.

Looking at the MSA numbers, Portland has about 200,000 more people; with Sacramento and Orlando having about the same population as San Antonio. When you project out the 1990-2000 growth rate to 2010, Orlando will join Sacramento and Portland as having larger projected 2010 MSAs than San Antonio.

To put all this another way: Bob McNair (the owner of the Texans) had to keep raising his bid until he got to $700 million dollars plus a publicly financed $310 million retractable roof, state of the art stadium before getting the NFL to stop begging for LA to get a stadium plan together in 1999. And Houston, at #10 in DMA and #8 in MSA has over 2.5 times the number of TV homes and MSA population than San Antonio has. If Houston (who had a stadium financing plan in place a year before LA's deadline) was seen as clearly less desirable than LA (until McNair started raising his franchise fee bid in $50 million increments to get the league's attention), there is no way the league would ever endorse San Antonio as a viable city when LA still has no team. The difference in advertising revenue is just way too great. It's not the NFL or commish "hating on SA", it's just simple math.

Now, if Benson wants to move the team on his own it's a little different; but it still means 24 of 32 owners would have to approve the move. Would that happen? Probably, since they approved the Cardinals, Rams, Raiders, Browns, and Oilers moves in past/recent years. Prior to any approval though, the City would need to commit to either build a new stadium or renovate the Alamodome, (the 2001 study commissioned by the city said it would cost $140 million to get it close to NFL standards) plus match or somehow mitigate the ticket guarantees/subsidies that Benson has from the state of LA in the Superdome (which he has refused to give up in exchange for a renovated Superdome in the past). Per a recent article in the E-N, common thinking is 120 boxes and 10,000 club level seats need to be sold for a team to be financially viable for the owner.


Can San Antonio do it? Honestly, I don't know. It will require a tremendous amount of public money for (1) the stadium, and (2) ticket/box guarantees if sales fall short. Right now, I'd be willing to bet that a significant number of people are thinking the Saints can just move into the Dome with a minimum (MLS-sized) public investment in renovations. Once the real numbers for public spending become more widely known and understood though, I have a feeling that the general public's enthusiasm will be somewhat tempered. But as football crazy as San Antonio is right now, there still may be enough support for it to happen.

[TheWriter]

PT’s comments shouldn’t surprise anybody. The NFL would be crazy to support SA when Los Angeles is available at any time, much less given the current situation. Here’s why: The two main indicators to look at are Nielsen Media Research ranking of TV homes in a DMA (Designated Market Area) and to a lesser extent, MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) population. A distant third from the League’s perspective is corporate/fan support. The NFL cares much, much more about ad revenue (DMA & MSA rankings) than luxury box sales support (corporate base), which is more important to the individual owners.

Good job. However, let me throw you a few curve balls.

San Antonio's percentage growth from 2000 to 2004 was 16.4%

Also, how does one find out the number of tv's a city has? Not by the Nielsen box they give people?

Because I have a tv, and I gave no Nielsen box. My parents home has six (five in the bedrooms and one in the kitchen that is never really used) none of which have the box.

So how do they know its only 760,410? Is it by "how many people have jobs in the city." If so, as of 2004 there were almost 900,000 (893,000) empolyed reisdents in San Antonio.

1 New York-Northern New Jersey-Long................... 9,146.20
2 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana ................... 6,461.30 (8,143.20 with Riverside/San Bernardino)
3 Chicago-Naperville- .................................. 4,741.70
4 Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington .................................. 2,967.90
5 Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington ........................ 2,918.50
6 Washington-Arlington-Alexandria ......................... 2,844.60
7 Houston-Baytown-Sugar Land ............................. 2,642.70
8 Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach ................... 2,640.50
9 Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta ............................ 2,517.60
10 Boston-Cambridge-Quincy ................................... 2,429.00
11 San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont ......................... 2,204.30 (3,058.00 with San Jose)
12 Detroit-Warren-Livonia ......................................... 2,174.20 2,364.50 with Ann Arbor
13 Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale ..................................... 1,859.20
14 Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington ....................... 1,833.60
15 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue ..................................... 1,712.90 (1,961.3 with Olympia & Bremerton-Silverdale )
16 Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario ....................... 1,681.90
17 San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos ......................... 1,518.30
18 St. Louis .................................................. ............ 1,445.50
19 Baltimore-Towson ................................................. 1,334.60
20 Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater ........................ 1,278.20
21 Denver-Aurora .................................................. .... 1,272.80 (1,436.00 with Boulder)
22 Pittsburgh .................................................. ........... 1,211.50
23 Kansas City .................................................. ........ 1,147.10 (1,390.60 with Topeka/St. Joe)
24 Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton ............................ 1,099.20
25 Cincinnati-Middletown .......................................... 1,079.30 (1,528.10 with Dayton)
26 Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor ....................................... 1,078.90 (1,452.70 with Akron)
27 Sacramento--Arden-Arcade--Roseville ................. 1,022.00
28 Orlando .................................................. ............... 975.8
29 Columbus .................................................. ........... 907.50
30 San Antonio .................................................. ........ 893
31 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara ........................ 853.7
32 Las Vegas-Paradise ............................................. 835.8
33 Indianapolis .................................................. ........ 812.9
34 Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News ................. 803.4
35 Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis ......................... 801.4


I'd think they have tv's whether little or big screen.

I just don't get it.

Also, the MSA for San Antonio as of 2004 was 1,854,050 people.

RANK MSA 2004
1 New York-Newark-Edison, NY-NJ-PA 18709802
2 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA 12925330
3 Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, IL-IN-WI 9391515
4 Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD 5800614
5 Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX 5700256
6 Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach, FL 5361723
7 Houston-Baytown-Sugar Land, TX 5180443
8 Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV 5139549
9 Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA 4708297
10 Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI 4493165
11 Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH 4424649
12 San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA 4153870
13 Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA 3793081
14 Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ 3715360
15 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA 3166828
16 Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI 3116206
17 San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA 2931714
18 St. Louis, MO-IL 2764054
19 Baltimore-Towson, MD 2639213
20 Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL 2587967
21 Pittsburgh, PA 2401575
22 Denver-Aurora, CO 2287245
23 Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH 2137073
24 Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton, OR-WA 2064336
25 Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN 2058221
26 Sacramento--Arden-Arcade--Roseville, CA 2016702
27 Kansas City, MO-KS 1925319
28 Orlando, FL 1861707
29 San Antonio, TX 1854050
30 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA 1741431

A lot of MSA's where shuffled around (Sac, Portland, and others) cities added and cities taken away.

Also, Riverside is part of metro LA. No way they're getting a team.