Seth Payne and Sean Pendergast discuss the Texans seeking a new location for their headquarters and training facility.
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00:00The big news item that was making the rounds yesterday, Jonathan Alexander of The Chronicle
00:04had an exclusive on this. Good job, Jonathan. That the Texans are seeking a new location
00:11for their headquarters. So it would be the headquarters, it would be the practice fields,
00:15the weight rooms, the meeting spaces. A lot of these things in the stadium that they've done
00:20major upgrades to over the last couple of years, you know, the cafeteria, all these things,
00:25um, that they are looking for somewhere in Houston to, to kind of separate the business
00:33and the practice side of the stadium for Texans purposes would be a game day venue only. And this
00:39is what Seth, most of the league has an arrangement like this. I didn't realize
00:44that the Texans were one of only four teams that house their headquarters and their practice
00:50facility in the same either building or area as their stadium. The other three are Cincinnati,
00:58New England and Carolina. Um, but this is, and Hannah McNair has some interesting quotes here
01:03that we'll get to in a second, but what were your initial thoughts when you saw this?
01:07You know, just as a quick bookkeeping part of it too. I wonder if I know there are teams
01:12specifically where they have a facility, but it's next to the stadium. So it's not like it's,
01:17so there's a lot that are in the same geographic location. Like the bills are
01:21there. They're just not in the stadium. Um, I honestly, from a player's perspective,
01:28I went to visit the Falcons once as a free agent and I was blown away by how cool it was
01:35there in flowery branch, which is way North of Atlanta. And I don't know about how many
01:39miles it is. I just know that with Atlanta traffic, it takes like the day I was there,
01:43it seemed like it took 90 minutes to get to Atlanta. Um, it's in the suburbs, you know,
01:49and it's in like the country suburbs. So it was like a college campus. They had their huge bubble.
01:56They had their facility that overlooked the practice field. They had multiple fields,
02:01but they had athletic dorms, like the equivalent of a college athletic dorms where
02:05they're, they're younger players or guys who had just been signed could actually stay there
02:09during training camp. They stayed right there like in dorms basically. Um, really cool. Uh,
02:15and it's, it's a nice environment because you are, you're just, you're secluded. You can just
02:21dial in. I think guys with families probably appreciate just being able to be closer to work,
02:27but still have a house with a yard and everything. Um, so I can see the advantages to it
02:31strictly from a player's perspective, from the, from the community's perspective, I, I don't think
02:37it affects anything one way or the other. Most people by and large are, they never see the
02:42players working out or going to meetings anyway. So whether they're doing it at the stadium or not,
02:46um, this, this does seem like maybe the most reasonable solution. If, if the Texans feel like,
02:54man, it's a constant distraction having all this stuff going on. Um, well, we're trying to just
03:00conduct our business, but all off season long, you got circuses and, and dirt tracks being
03:05constructed and everything else. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know how many people understand
03:09the, the totality of the relationship the Texans have with NRG stadium. They are tenants in that
03:14stadium. You know, the Rockets control Toyota center, like all those concerts and everything
03:18like the Fertitta's get the benefit of anything that happens in the Toyota center. That's just
03:23the nature of the arrangement that the Rockets have with that venue. It's not that way for the
03:27Texans. They're a tenant there the same way. Disney on ice is a tenant there. And the rodeo
03:31is a tenant there and whatnot. And Hannah McNair has some interesting quotes in here.
03:35Um, she says this it's disruptive. It's something we struggle with throughout the year. We don't
03:40know who's going to be there, meaning in the stadium, whether it's a contortionist or princess
03:46Disney on ice, whatever it is, you're constantly walking through it. And the bid, the money quote
03:51here is we've outgrown the space and that's kind of the feeling I, this is kind of the next step
03:56in being a big boy franchise is, is having a, you know, the headquarter like, like Dallas has
04:01with Frisco. I'm curious with the Atlanta one, Seth, what's it called again? Flowery branch.
04:06The, the city that it's in, what's the equivalent for Houston in terms of how far outside of the
04:12city that, or how far from the stadium it was? Oh gosh. Uh, you know what, there might be a lot
04:17of similarities in terms of the fact that just Atlanta is very spread out and everything is
04:23like Katie is, I would say I had, it felt, I'm trying to, it's almost even like, okay, forget
04:30distance, but almost just the way things feel. It almost would feel like it's outside of Katie
04:36because Katie's become so big that it's reconnected. It felt to me, I mean, it was out next to a,
04:44you know, one of those big damned lakes up there. Yeah. M M E D lakes. Yep. Um,
04:48there was like, they were telling me about how much hunting and fishing there was all around.
04:53So it, it, in terms of how it felt, it felt like you were down in Manville maybe even before
04:59Manville started growing up. So it was something like that. It was, it was for them to get a
05:04similar experience, but not have to drive forever. I think they'd want to go South towards Manville
05:09way. That's where a lot of guys are to begin with because the stadium is South right now,
05:13you know, compared to things, our stadiums, not downtown like Atlanta's is. Um, so, um,
05:18so yeah, we've outgrown the space is an interesting quote. Now,
05:22is there any connection here? It's real quick. Yeah. So flowery branch to downtown Atlanta is
05:29one hour, nine minutes, 44 miles. So obviously with traffic. Yeah, that is, that's, that's like
05:36a little beyond Katie, you know, so 44 miles. Um, I mean the stadium then truly becomes just
05:41a game day thing. You know, if you're, I mean, it's right next to, it's right next to.
05:46Nantahala national forest. Yeah. It's really like, it's a nice country environment. You sound
05:53like you're as you were describing it. I'm like, yeah, this sounds like Huntsville,
05:56like you're out even beyond the woodlands. You know what I mean? Like it's so it's on Lake
06:01Lanier too. So at any given time you can go fishing and a corpse can float up while you're
06:06fishing. It's a beautiful thing. You can Lake Lanier have the most, it's got a ridiculous
06:10number of buildings. Yeah. Yeah. Those damn, those, those damned lakes, they're really
06:15dangerous because they get deep real fast. You know, it's an old, it's an old ravine that was
06:20filled in. So it goes from waiting height to 200 feet deep. Yep. Um, so the, and we know the
06:27rockets, if we're trying to draw a local analogy here, they just opened their own practice facility
06:32this past summer, 75,000 square feet. It's 10 minutes from Toyota center, 70 million bucks
06:37to build. This sounds like a bigger project just because you're talking about practice football
06:42fields as opposed to practice basketball courts. Um, you're moving your whole headquarters there
06:47as well into some sort of facility. I guess the connection, if I had to guess educated guests,
06:53the connection to any stadium project with NRG, a renovation of NRG, is that at least you're
06:59clearing out the business space in there to make the stadium a little bit more modular for whatever
07:04it is you're trying to do to make NRG right now, the first day, the stated goal by the McNair's
07:10by the County, by the rodeo is that we want to make NRG stated art. The ability to do that is
07:17to me a little bit dubious, just based on logistics, if nothing else, how the stadium
07:23is structured now and the necessity of finding the time to renovate it. When that stadium is
07:28being used the entire year long, there's some things that in terms of, you know, in terms of
07:33one thing that CJ Stroud and others have noted is that they'd love to get people into the stadium
07:38earlier. And I mean, you just think about your game day experience going in and all right,
07:44you got to go through security, all that. And there's ways to maybe make that more efficient,
07:48but then once you pass security, okay, single file on these ridiculously long escalators and
07:54don't worry, we'll all get you in there by kickoff single file to get through a second gate for the
07:59right to go up that escalator. Like it's like, there's like, there's like three or four bottlenecks
08:04to get into the stadium. And that's, and if you've seen SoFi or if you've seen the renderings,
08:10like Cleveland's going to build a new stadium here soon. And the artists renderings, you know,
08:14which are AI generated, like drone type videos of what the whole space would look like. You watch
08:20and see what their renderings are of the, get into the stadium experience. And you're like,
08:25oh my God, that is absolutely delightful. It's this wide open area that basically just
08:30feeds directly into the stadium. It's yeah. It's incredible.
08:34That's a, it's one of those things too. I'm sure when they break all this down,
08:38it's all the, all the little minor inconveniences that end up adding up to the total experience.
08:45And I think that there's some stuff that even you yourself might not feel like, oh yeah,
08:49whatever. That's not a big deal. Why do I, it all adds up and you don't even consciously.
08:53And that's kind of make it as easy to just go park your car, have a few drinks and then
08:59just get into the game. That's it. That's it. A couple more, you know, when I was at Buffalo
09:04though, this is what annoys me though, is Buffalo had one of the oldest stadiums.
09:08And when I went, I went to that game. I remember I did the pregame from the Buffalo game that day,
09:12where it ended up raining like crazy. But it was almost like I was looking out at the stands and
09:18wondering how is this going to get so full right beforehand? And then lo and behold,
09:23I went out to go out. I was going to go out and try to meet my brother for a few minutes before
09:27the game. I opened the door from the press box and it was almost like, it was like a cartoon.
09:33I just saw this wave of people coming towards me. I went right back in. I felt like I was
09:39John Snow about to stand up to an army all on myself or something. And that's an old, old
09:44stadium. So I don't, I don't listen. I don't, don't tell me how hard it is. Just show me the
09:48baby. Okay. Don't tell me about the pain. Spit that baby out. Give me a, give me my easy egress
09:55and whatever the opposite grasses. Yes. Yes. Ingress and egress, egress and ingress.
10:00A couple more quotes here from Hannah, which I think people are going to like to hear.
10:04There's probably anything that has to do with the Texans in the stadium. There's probably a
10:07bit of PTSD over what happened with the Oilers back in the day. So it's always good to hear
10:12the McNair's say what we know they're feeling about Houston. Hannah says in this article,
10:18I think most of us in Houston remember that feeling back in the nineties. And we don't
10:22want to experience that again as a city referencing the Oilers leaving for Nashville. Personally,
10:27this is Hannah personally for the families, for businesses, it left a hole in the heart of Houston
10:32when that happened, but the best outbring of franchise to Houston. That's part of our duty
10:37to the city, to our fans as well, to make sure we have a good outcome here. Yeah, I think, uh,
10:43I don't, I, as I've said before, I, I would be really, really, really shocked if the McNair's
10:52ever decided to move away from Houston, just because I know how important it is to Cal to
10:59carry on his father's legacy and his father, the first meeting we ever had as a team
11:05it with Bob McNair, like when the players first met Bob McNair and Bob McNair, and it came in and
11:10spoke to us, we were down in the bowels of the Astrodome because our locker room was in the
11:14Astrodome that first off season. And he basically told us a story of how the Oilers had left and a
11:22few years went by and he's looking around and nobody's bringing a team. So he said, like almost
11:29as a matter of civic duty, we got to get a team in here. And, um, so it's never with Bob McNair,
11:36obviously he treated it like a business cause he's not a dummy, but it, it was as much,
11:41it seemed to me as a player, uh, something he felt was a civic obligation or duty as well
11:47as a business. Yeah. And, and the McNair's, uh, they don't, they don't shy away from that.
11:52This generation doesn't shy away from that. I would be, I agree with what you said. I'd be
11:57shocked. I mean, I'd be stunned if it even got close to something where there was a threat to
12:02move. I would be mildly surprised if there's ever even any saber rattling by Cal McNair and Hannah
12:07McNair over the, you know, over like to the extent that they're looking at other cities
12:11or something like that. Katie Blackburn, the Bengals. Yes. The anti-McNair. She just flat
12:19out said like, sure. It's totally possible. Bengals leases up after this year, this story
12:24pops up yesterday. And this Katie Blackburn, who's already pissed off Trey Hendrickson
12:28by saying like, well, you should be happy with whatever we offer you. You know, like
12:32I have a quote right here. I guess go wherever we wanted after this year, if we didn't pick up
12:37the option. So, you know, we'll see, like I said, all these things will be done in due course.
12:42Yeah. We play it day by day. Like everything else, we just have discussions and then make
12:47decisions at the appropriate time. Like, okay, he's treating this like I treat conversations
12:52with my wife. I tell her all the time, listen, Brandy, I'll pick up and leave. Damn it.
12:59Katie Blackburn of his relationship. That's how I lay down the law. Damn it. God,
13:03I hope she's not listening. Withholding your services. Yes. All right. So yeah,
13:10but I look as someone who covers training camp, Seth, would you be excited to cover training camp
13:16at a different facility here? Yeah. Manville or wherever it is. This is kind of pumped. It's
13:20something different, you know? I might not be as excited when the commute out of Katie or Manville
13:25or Huntsville or wherever it is, whateverville. Yeah. Get yourself a nice Airbnb, you know?
13:31Yeah. Just happen to make a vacation of it. That's not bad. That's not a bad idea at all.
13:36All right. Payne and Pendergast, you can text us, 713-572-4610. People weighing in on where
13:44they think this thing should go. Someone suggesting Lake Jackson. That'll be great.
13:48Go to the Lake during the day, you know? A little practice in the morning, then to the Lake during
13:52the day. A little water skiing. A little- Lake Jackson might be nice. Yeah, that's a good idea
13:59too. A lake. Well, Manville, compared to Flowery Branch, is still way closer. Commute time right
14:04now is 28 minutes from Manville. It's not bad. 288 is way easier to you. I used to live down that
14:10way. So this would be more like, if you wanted the Flowery Branch equivalent, you might be going out
14:14to Angleton or West Columbia. It's pretty far, man. When you said it's an hour and whatever,
14:19like, oh, man. That's during traffic, though. Yeah, that's true. Atlanta traffic too.
14:25Atlanta, it's 735 AM right now.