Houston is set to become the home to another major league sports franchise. The San Jose Earthquakes, a major league soccer team from California is relocating to Houston. Play begins in April of 2006- start of the kick off season for MLS. There is much talk of the large Hispanic population in Houston and certainly any professional soccer team will find a built in fan base here. But Houston is a very multicultural city and soccer fans come from all over the world. The city would do well to target the entire city in promoting the sport and choosing the location of the stadium for city wide convenience.
With the introduction of professional soccer, Houston will be home to four major league sports – the Astro’s baseball, the Rockets’ basketball, the yet to be named soccer team and the Houston Texans’ football. (The last one we could do without). I hope the new soccer team does not choose a weather based name like the San Jose Earthquakes – although in Houston, "Hurricanes" will surely come up for consideration. How about a few suggestions here?
Accidental Blogger 
3 responses to “Real Football Coming to Houston”
Houston is one of the few major cities where no images spring to (my) mind. It’s got oil rigs and big tall city buildings, but is there anything distinctive about the place? Admittedly, I’ve never so much as been to Texas, but I can picture snapshots of Boston, Baltimore, NY, Chicago, Minneapolis, SF, LA, San Diego, and even San Antonio.
I think my favorite sports team name is the Baltimore Ravens, if for no other reason than “it’s creative.” Or at least I’m imagining that the football team is named after a famous poem of the city’s own Edgar Poe. Maybe it’s really just the state bird, like the chickadee for Maine.
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I have heard this from many visitors – that Houston does not have anything in way of landmarks or distinctive architectural features, unlike most other big cities. Houston is the fourth largest US city and being relatively new, lacks the historic features of the others.
Houston to me, appears to be a series of distinctive neighborhoods (like self contained villages) strung together to form a huge sprawling city. The commercial downtown, the university medical center (which contains Rice village), the museum district, the aristocratic River Oaks, NASA, the Heights, with its Victorian doll houses, neighborhoods in east Houston which lost respectability and lustre with the ’80’s oil bust and Sugar Land, the shiny suburb of Tom DeLay – all have distinct character but no continuous theme permeates the entire city.
Houston has a good ballet and symphony, a thriving theater district, some excellent museums … and sports, sports and sports. It also has the coldest air conditioning of any other place in my experience. What really struck me as odd when I first moved here is the density of churches and nail salons per city block.
Houston’s population (4 million +) is extremely multi-ethnic and multicultural. Even the majority of native born Americans moved here from somewhere else. Some Houstonians sport bumper stickers on their cars which say “A Rare Breed – Native of Houston”. One of my friends, a Boston native and a long time Houston resident said to me once, “Houston is the opposite of NYC – not much of a place to visit but a great place to live.”
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The only sport that rules in India is cricket and that too the international variety. The domestic cricket scene is languishing in the sense that although the matches take place, very few are interested. The once mighty football clubs are strapped for cash and less said the better of Indian hockey which was once considered the “national game”!
The members of the Indian national cricket team enjoy star status.They have huge fan following, are brand ambassadors for endless products and some of them are as wealthy as the Bollywood stars. A domestic airline company has valued the Indian team at Rs. 3.1 billion and has been awarded the bid by the cricket board for this amount.
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