Warning to readers: If you are truly a loyal and die-hard Texans fan, i.e., most anyone on a football message board during the offseason, this is not aimed at you.
My first Oilers game was in 1976 and I've attended every NFL game in this city (except for one) since 1978. A 20 ranking sounds about right -- I may have even rated us a little lower.
There are positive signs around but seeing so many season ticket holders sell out (literally) to Packers fans for the Sunday Night game just to make a buck -- disgusted me. There were thousands of Packers fans in prime Texans PSL seats. How did they get them? The four next to me bought theirs from a Texans season ticket holder who wanted to make a buck on eBay. Passionate and loyal fans don't do that IMO. Casual, fair weather, entertain-me fans do.
Then there's the Texans terrible performance on the field against the Browns which was surpassed only by the fickle, fair weather, and classless performance in the stands that day. Cheer 'em when they're up - kick 'em when they're down. That's our rep., like it or not.
But smacking your own is "NFL normal" and GB, Philly, NYJ, and Pittsburgh slam their own on a regular basis - but there's a difference between them and us: they keep coming back week after week because of the undying passion and loyalty that's part of their persona. We sell our tickets to opponent's fans to make a few $$ on a high demand game, or we do something else on Sunday until they start winning again. Now that the honeymoon is over, wait and see what happens in the stands this year if another sub-500 season comes our way. We are Atlanta.
As far as great fan bases, when your team's fans start showing up en masse for road games, that's when you know you've arrived. I've only been to three roadies in three seasons (New Orleans, Nashville, and Denver) but based on that, all I can say is we have a long long way to go.
I witnessed a lot of Oliers-Steelers games over the years and the Steelers Packers at #1-#2 seems right on to me. There will be as many Steelers fans in Reliant in '05 as we had Packers in '04, primarily because a lot of them already live here and they will gobble up the Ticketmaster share, and secondly because of paragraph three above.
Miami and Dallas at 3 and 4 is a bit generous. I think the Eagles (yes the ones that boo Santa Claus) and Jets fans need to be in the top five. Neither team has done anything in decades (won a championship) but few teams have more loyal fans across the board than they do. As far as the Cowboys, a large fan base doesn't necessarily mean a 'great' fan base IMO. Whether they like to admit it or not, their following consists a lot of the same fair weather/bandwagon stuff we've seen in Houston and a lot of other places over the years. The only difference is their weather has been fair a lot more than ours.
This (my rant and the author's) is all very subjective stuff and designed to inspire debate because there is obviously no right or wrong to any of this.
