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Thursday, December 18, 1997

Life in Houston goes on without the Oilers

By MICHELLE KOIDIN / Associated Press

HOUSTON -- Many Houston Oilers fans stopped paying attention last year when the team struck a deal to move to Nashville. Now, as the Oilers finish their first season as Tennessee's team, they have few followers remaining in the city they called home for 37 years.

"It started off small and it's now infinitesimal," says Charlie Pallilo, host of a sports talk show on KTRH-AM, which until this year was the Oilers' flagship radio station. "Out of sight, increasingly out of mind."

"Next year it will be almost totally diminished," adds John McClain, the Houston Chronicle's Oilers beat writer for 18 years who still writes a weekly "Luved Ya Blue" column for the team's faithful.

Oilers merchandise is hard to find in stores. Coverage in the newspaper is similar to any other team. The local NBC affiliate has televised just six games.

That's quite a change for a city that used to be so in love with the Oilers that it twice filled the Astrodome to greet the team after a playoff loss.

Proof of Houston's lack of interest was most evident following the Oilers' 27-14 Thanksgiving Day drubbing of the Dallas Cowboys.

"The night after that, we had maybe one Oiler-related call," says Pallilo, whose radio station aired Oilers games from 1991 to 1996.

Not long ago, Columbia blue hats, T-shirts and anything with "Luv Ya Blue" written on it could be found all over town.

Now, none of the 20 Academy Sports & Outdoors stores in the Houston area sells Tennessee Oilers garb, said buyer Jake Slight.

"When they announced the decision to leave, we actually cleared it out at 50 percent off of retail," said Patrick Workman, manager of a huge Oshman's Sporting Goods. "It just didn't sell."

A Chronicle survey found that fewer than one-fourth of its readers wanted the newspaper to continue making the Oilers their No. 1 NFL team.

On television, Oilers ratings in Houston hit as low as a 6.4 rating (103,955 homes) and an 11 share (11 percent of households using TVs were watching the Oilers) on Nov. 2 against Jacksonville.

No wonder KPRC-TV passed on so many games this fall, including Sunday's finale against Pittsburgh.

"We made some judgments based on viewer demand," said station general manager Steve Wasserman.

Fans couldn't even count on sports bars to show Oilers games on their biggest TVs.

Only one matchup this season earned "featured game" status, allowing it to be viewed on an 18-foot TV at SRO Sports Bar & Cafe. Other games have been shown on just one 13-foot TV.

However, over at The End Zone, those left longing for the Oilers can commiserate with bartender Chris Durrett, who remains so devoted that she still has Houston Oilers towels hanging on a bedroom wall.

"I'm not going to change my pennants or my hats or my T-shirts or my pompons," she said.

Ms. Durrett has a compatriot in Chris Lockridge, who was so frustrated at not being able to get Oilers games on the tube that he bought a satellite dish.

Lockridge's withdrawal has been severe. He even traveled to Tennessee to watch the team play on his sixth wedding anniversary -- while his wife sat at home in Houston.

"I knew the Oilers before I knew her," jokes Lockridge, a 32-year-old pharmacy worker who even named his son Derrick after the team's logo.

Other football fans in Houston apparently got their fix this fall on Saturdays by going to Rice University or University of Houston games.

Rice had its best average attendance since 1972 (35,509 fans), while Houston drew an average of 19,678, up from 17,551 last year and 16,644 in 1995.

But pro football will return to the nation's fourth-largest city if Houston businessmen Robert McNair and Chuck Watson get their way.

McNair and Watson would prefer to get an expansion team but they also would be willing to buy an existing team and move it to Houston. They have created a company with the sole purpose of luring a new team.

The Oilers left because they were unhappy with the Astrodome. The new group has architects and engineers studying the possibilities: renovating the Astrodome, building a new stadium or fixing up Rice Stadium, said Steve Patterson, the former Houston Rockets general manager who's in charge of the effort. The idea is to present a stadium-financing plan to the NFL in March.

If Houston indeed gets a new team, super fan Lockridge would go to games but certainly wouldn't throw himself in to the same extent, filling half his garage with memorabilia.

"They might move again," he says. "You never know nowadays."