NFL in OKC

[G.Walker]

When Nashville brought the Oilers (now Titans) to their city, the metro area only had a population of 1,311,789, just saying.

[jedicurt]

When Nashville brought the Oilers (now Titans) to their city, the metro area only had a population of 1,311,789, just saying.

but that was an owner wanting to move the team there... they didn't have a group out of Nashville try and buy a team and bring it there. If OKC ever gets a supporter of the city who ends up owning an NFL team as majority owner... then ok. we have a chance... but the odds of that happening are not that great as those teams don't come up for sell very often, and there is usually a lot of competition when they do.

our best bet would be for NFL Expansion... and i just don't think the NFL would give us more than a glace of a look

[Hawk405359]

but that was an owner wanting to move the team there... they didn't have a group out of Nashville try and buy a team and bring it there. If OKC ever gets a supporter of the city who ends up owning an NFL team as majority owner... then ok. we have a chance... but the odds of that happening are not that great as those teams don't come up for sell very often, and there is usually a lot of competition when they do.

our best bet would be for NFL Expansion... and i just don't think the NFL would give us more than a glace of a look

Basically, yeah. To me, the question isn't "can we reach a population point by 20XX" but "Can we be the city so valuable a market that the league looks at us over every other city that will be available by 20XX."

There's a lot of speculation, and that's fine. Everything could just as easy go the other way. Natural gas prices could drop again, meaning our current energy corporations could lose their ability to support it. Boeing very well could up and move, not being nearly as attached to the city as the energy companies. Who knows what the future of health care could bring with all the uncertainty? Spending cuts could put Tinker on the chopping block again. And even worse, when the Thunder starts not being amazing, fan support could dry up, which would set us back as a pro-sports town in the court of public opinion, which matters more than the rest of it. There's no guarantee that we keep growing at the rate we are (and I always found population numbers to be an arbitrary measure), or that we'll even keep growing for 20 straight years.

But more importantly than all of that, getting a pro football team just relies on the city being the absolutely most valuable looking option when a team is looking to move. The NFL isn't a variable league, teams don't move often and the league expands even less frequently. And even then, they're at least flirting with the idea of expanding outside the US as well.