As another Las Vegas resident, I have to doubt that there’s any way the NFL would even consider putting a franchise here.
I said the exact same thing to my wife yesterday. They ought to put the team in San Marcos and call them the “Outlets”.
Austin is by far the largest city without any major pro sports franchises. There’s a NBA d-league team, a minor league baseball team in Round Rock, and a minor league hockey team.
They’re roughly 160 miles from Houston, and a lot more to Dallas, so I’m not sure exactly how they’re too close to other NFL franchises, considering that NYC, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington have 5 NFL teams between them, and the total distance from Baltimore to NYC is only 224 miles.
If I had to guess, I’d think it’s because Jerry Jones doesn’t want to give up that sweet, sweet TV money and merchandising in a big chunk of the state- basically anywhere more than 100-150 miles from Houston is Cowboys country.
A San Antonio or Austin NFL team would suck a big chunk of the state’s population into its orbit, and out of Jerry’s pocket.
Well, not so far off, and as for building a fan base for a pro team in Austin, forget it. Five of every six cars here has a Longhorn logo on the back; nobody here is the least bit interested in any football other than UT (except maybe high school).
It’s also the first city you hit if you take 101 towards Los Angeles. SJ is larger than SF or Oakland.
Las Vegas is larger: 2.03 million vs. 1.88 million. Austin is the second largest; for the record, the top five are rounded out by Virginia Beach (1.71M), Providence (1.60M), and Louisville (1.20M). (These are all population estimates of the Metro Statistical Areas as of 2013.)
It’s not just proximity that matters, of course; it’s also the size of the market that makes a team viable. The combined population of the four metro areas you mention is approximately 35 million people, or about twice as many people as live in DFW, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin put together.
ETA: this doesn’t mean that your theory about Jerry Jones is wrong, of course. The NHL is in a similar situation in Toronto, where the city could easily support a second team.
Los Angeles has The Trojans. They don’t need any other team.
I’m sceptical of Toronto supporting a team for 5 years the Bills played one regular and one exhibition (the term pre season is a pet peeve) in Toronto. They had to give tickets away.
It was a flawed plan, but might have doomed Toronto from getting a team. Also Buffalo counts on Canadians as a healthy chunk of the fans and would veto hard.
The Seahawks, although it seems to be driven more by media saturation than people who are truly passionate about them. Portland itself is a little island of 49ers fans from all the transplants, but you have to keep that under wraps lest you be identified as a Californian. In the unscientific sample of people watching the game with me, there was only one person who really wanted Seattle to win. The rest of the people either wanted Seattle to lose (the 49ers fans) or wanted the Patriots to lose (because everyone hates the Patriots).
Very true. There are a lot of people who like watching American football here, but I’d be amazed if they could fill a stadium with people willing to pay to go to a game.
New York City. Both the Jets and Giants play in NJ, the Jets office is in Florham Park, NJ, the Giants office is in East Rutherford, NJ.
The most valuable franchise in the National Football League is in Los Angeles. All an NFL owner needs to do is threaten to move there, and their current city ponies up for yet another stadium it really can’t afford. I’ll believe the Rams are moving there when I see the opening kickoff. It seems every year we hear the Raiders, Vikings, Jaguars, Bill, Rams are moving there and it never happens. Its also extremely difficult to get permitting to build a new stadium in LA, and frankly, Im not sure theres a big clamoring for a team there. Most fans there root for other teams, and when you look at the rest of the country, every major market is covered by the NFL, all of them held hostage by the Los Angeles boogeyman. The NFL might clamor about moving to LA, putting a team in LA, its all bluster so far to keep the politicians in the 31 NFL markets in check.
As for the other large markets:
San Antonio/Austin----heavy Cowboys cities. Jerry Jones is also a very powerful owner, and I have a feeling no team will be moving there without significant opinion from him.
San Jose— as I think mentioned, already spoken for by the 49ers.
Columbus------they already have a team, called Ohio State----and again, I think the Bengals and Browns would also have a say about this
Toronto----getting an NFL ready stadium built would be very difficult, also the NFL has tread lightly on the CFL in recent years
Las Vagas---- a move there MIGHT encourage GAMBLING on the NFL, and we dont want to start there. Another transient city that would end up with half the fans cheering the other team.
Basically, the NFL isn’t expanding anytime soon, and theres no serious motivation for its owners to move their teams to Los Angeles.
The only move I would LIKE to see is the Jets break their 30 year lease or whatever it is and move to New York City proper. I don’t think a lot of fans around the country appreciate what a pain in the ass it is for most New York City football fans to get to an NFL game at MetLIfe Stadium.
Los Angeles is one of those head-scratcher ones though. Las Vegas and Austin are right on that bubble of being big enough, but for whatever reason aren’t clamoring for pro teams. In Austin’s case, it’s because they have a HUGE college sports empire right there (University of Texas), that’s usually competitive at just about everything, and the city’s close enough to Houston to be on the periphery of their pro sports orbit. (Austin’s more of a Texans / Astros city than a Cowboys / Rangers one, FTR).
Not sure about Las Vegas… although the really fragmented political landscape of the area can’t help, and neither can the extreme growth over the past 15 years or so. I suspect that with that growth, a lot of the people don’t really think of themselves as Las Vegans (or whatever the term is) yet, so they’re not really into things like local sports. Same thing could be true for Austin as well, having seen similar growth.
Plus, Austin’s a weird place. A lot of the middle-aged and older types are either people who live there because they don’t like the larger Texas cities, or they’re just conservative old-timers who haven’t seen the need for a pro sports team, and the under-35 crowd is too cool and hip for pro sports.
COULD Austin support a pro football team? Maybe, but
-
As you say, college football is king here. How many cities are there with a a hugely popular college team AND a thriving pro team? I suspect USC has more passionate fans in LA than the Rams or Raiders ever did. Miami, Florida and FLorida State all have more passionate fans than the DOlphins and Bucs do. The Falcons don’t have as large or as passionate a fan base as the Bulldogs or the Yellowjackets.
-
Austin taxpayers definitely wouldn’t build a new stadium to attract a team.
-
As with many Sun Belt cities, almost everybody in Austin (except my wife) is from somewhere else. I’m still a Giants fan, the mnay Chicago transplants are still Bears fans, the many Colorado transplats are still Broncos fans, the many Michiganders are still Lions fans, etc. Even among passionate NFL fans in Austin, there are very few people who want a new pro team here to follow.
russian heel:
It’s been tried. Opposition to a Jets stadium in New York City proper was torpedoed by Cablevision (owners of Madison Square Garden, the Rangers and the Knicks) and various politicians, and very likely cost NYC the 2012 Olympics as well.
Historically (as was noted upthread) the associations between Las Vegas and organized crime (and gambling on sports in particular) made professional sports leagues wary of setting up shop there. Of course, now Las Vegas is a family-friendly vacation destination, the mob influence has waned, the population has boomed, and some sports leagues have found a sense of humor about the whole thing.
So you *do *know the way…
Building any new stadiums in NYC has been absurdly difficult unless you already had a stadium in the general location (the Yankees and Mets). The new MLS team, NYCFC, has been looking all over the place, in any borough it can find space, and hasn’t come across anything that could work. So for now (and for probably longer than most people think) they’ll play their games in Yankee Stadium.
Like I said, Id LIKE to see it, not that it will happen, but most Jets fans live on Long Island, and if you know anything about traveling from any point there to the Meadowlands, its a hassle even without traffic. Im not even a New York resident, and I feel bad for those schmucks.
I doubt that has a lot to do with anything. The problem with the Buffalo Bills games in Toronto is that they’re the Buffalo Bills, not the Toronto Anything. Nobody in Toronto cares about Buffalo or feels any affinity for it, and Bills fans are no more common than, say, Steelers fans, Patriots fans, etc. The occasional regular season game, featuring a usually awful team, just doesn’t get the same kind of interest as a team that belongs to the city and its fan base.
Of course it also doesn’t help that the Rogers Centre is not suited for NFL football and is likely abandoning football altogether.
An actual Toronto-based team, in an NFL-quality stadium, would sell out every game. Of course, it would be murderous to the CFL.
My vague recollection (not necessarily reliable!) is that L.A. wouldn’t let itself get extorted into coughing up the dough for a new stadium, so the NFL pulled up stakes.
But what’s undeniable is that ever since, the NFL has found the existence of an L.A. without an NFL franchise to be a convenient tool to keep the other cities in line, i.e. “give us the new stadium of our dreams, or we’ll move your team to L.A.”