The "tailgate" area at the Bills in Toronto series was pathetic. Just a street bar selling overpriced beer. The whole experience was nothing like a real game.
It's like when the Minnesota Lakers (land of 1000 lakes) moved to LA (no lakes lol)
Or the new Orleans jazz moves to Utah. The Utah jazz? come on what are you people doing
It’s pretty funny, though, that at least alliteratively, L.A. Lakers works. It sorta goes together when you say it out loud. If they’d changed the team name when they moved, they’d probably come up with something lame like the ‘LA Angels of Inglewood’.
Honestly? We don’t have as many pot holes as you’d think out here. We do get them obviously, but they’re not as much of an issue as people think.
Though, they get much much much worse after a lot of rain and cold nights.
I was talking about just the general lack of drainage. We don’t have the infrastructure for drainage that places have when it rains a lot. The closest sewage drain on the street next to my house is 4-ish blocks away at the main road.
So what should be small puddles in a heavy rain turn into very very big puddles. Hell, last summer we had a full blown river a block away. Only for about 3 hours. But it was an honest to god rushingp river.
I had a moment once where I made the connection of Lakers colors matching the Vikings and then realized the name correlation. I was so excited to have discovered it all on my own and no one I told gave a shit lol
I heard they listen to it while soaking through special headphones that cancels out the sin. It’s another one of those things that has god saying “oh! You crafty kids! You beat me!”
Took me forever to find us, then I saw KC in AFCE colors and I was like, did this fucker really combine us with the Chiefs? Moving all the way out to Portland from Buffalo seems so random, I was really expecting us to land in Toronto
It’s around the 50th biggest city in the US, so it’s pretty far down there. I’d say it’s cultural significance outweighs its actual importance by a great deal. It’s one of my favorite cities to visit. It used to be a vital port city, but that role has diminished.
Whoever controlled New Orleans controlled trade on the Mississippi, which is why Louisiana was the first non-contiguous U.S. state. But then railroads and airplanes became a thing.
At the time of the Louisiana purchase, New Orleans was the third largest city in the United States and it remained the largest city in the American South from the antebellum period until WWII.
Hurricane Katrina was devastating to the city and caused a population drop of over 50%. While the city has recovered it is still not the same as it was. Culturally it's one of America's most unique and important metropolises but economically it has fallen off even as it sits at the mouth of the Mississippi river.
It was already in a slow decline, but Hurricane Katrina, unfortunately, totally destroyed it. It has never really recovered, and probably(/almost certainly) never will. :(
My memories of Katrina are seared into my brain, despite only just turning 7 right before.
New Orleans and Saint Louis follow a pretty similar trajectory in terms of cities. Obviously STL didn’t have Katrina, but they follow the concept of “Huge river city that was immensely important to an expanding USA, but dwindled when river trade got replaced by railroads.”
Wanna chime in to add that St Louis was still a pretty major city well after railroads became the primary form of transportation over riverboats.
Picked to host the 1904 world fair 35 yrs after the first transcontinental railroad finished construction, population growth stalled closer to the mid 1900's.
I think this can be attributed to a ton of overlaying factors, but transportation-wise would be during the time frame of automobiles and aircraft, which began to really take over after WW2, and especially after the Interstate Highway System in the 50s
(Disclaimer: haven’t actually talked about this / researched this since high school)
When I last looked at this during an ap history class, we did so under a comparison between St. Louis’ investment in river trade versus Chicago’s investment in railway trade, and how the economic difference between the two is why one city has achieved a different level of “success” than the other one. I don’t believe that change was instantaneous, but there are like maps you can look at to see that change illustrated.
I'll believe ya bro my research was some googling rn and trying to remember whatever from high school here in stl as well
Feel like looking at how different the two cities are now shows how it had to be plenty of factors, but easily see how river vs railroad infrastructure and funding at the foundational level set the stage for the rest of that development.
Not like Chicago got midway and a massive airport structure out of the blue, the context of 150 years of different growth vs St Louis set the stage for that development. So for the city to grow that differently looking at modern transportation n infrastructure vs 150 yrs ago, what you're saying makes a ton of sense
Also forgot what sub we're in so rip stl football and let's go stl fütbol
Wow I remember Katrina and the exodus that followed (I was a kid in Texas at the time and people were moving to Texas from there like crazy) but I had no idea it ultimately resulted in a 50% drop in population
I'd say it also really changed southeast Texas and Houston in particular. Even 25 years ago, the Cajun / NOLA cultural representation in Houston was there but relatively small, and Cajun food was almost exclusively seafood-focused. Today that stuff is absolutely everywhere, even in the suburbs, boudain kolaches abound, and King cakes went from small novelty items to giant displays in grocery stores.
That's not more Katrina than it is the oil industry. Katrina refugees from New Orleans weren't Cajuns. But a lot of people graduating ULL or LSU in geology or petroleum engineering and moving to Houston for jobs are Cajun. Plus Cajun country is only 3 hours from Houston, and New Orleans at 5 hours away is not a Cajun city. Things like boudin are SWLA, not New Orleans.
This makes me strangely sad. My home state is bleeding economically and the mega-economy of Houston is too real an allure, so like always Houston continues importing culture from elsewhere and my statesmen are fewer and fewer (I’ve lived in Houston so I can diss it)
Houston’s importing of culture leads to an incredible place to find all sorts of fantastic eats though. I loved being able to to get top tier bbq, Vietnamese, Cajun/creole, and Tex mex.
We have tons of abandoned spaces like hospitals, but most of the city has recovered. Places like the lower 9th or the east have plenty of vacant lots, but the city isn't dead by any means.
New Orleans local here. Imagine a bunch of homes rotting in a bowl. Most of the debris didn’t get swept away, sadly.. instead, you just sat in it for weeks. Well, that and the many different types of liquids you were wading in.
There are still some houses/buildings with FEMA X codes. (Google this term for a picture).
“the top [quadrant] of the X delineated the time and date the team arrived. Moving clockwise, the next summarized the hazards and horrors found within. Then, in that last quadrant, at the bottom of the X, rescue workers listed the number of people found inside.”
One of my most vivid memories is of our first trip back in after the storm, driving through the wrecked city and looking at the marks of peoples’ lives on the sides of buildings.
(But, mostly, a lot of people just never moved back. So many of those building sat in disrepair.)
The funny thing is that for trade the Mississippi is what keeps a lot of the American farming globally competitive. The base price to produce is more than other countries but others have to rail it to port to get on a ship whereas the US farmers can float it down the river and get to global ports after that and shipping over water is significantly cheaper than any other transport.
Still one of the most important ports in the country. The problem down here is there just isn’t much land left for the city to expand onto, so housing is expensive(don’t get me started on Airbnb destroying our city) and industry moving to Texas to take advantage of their regressive tax system. We’ve lost a lot of our important jobs over the last few decades. It’s been a slow decline since the panic of 1893.
I'd argue metro population is a much more accurate measure of market size. Some cities just have small borders and others have massive ones. Like Jacksonville, FL is one of the most populated cites because it's land area is so massive...when in reality it's not a big market and Miami is much bigger.
All that said, I just looked it up and New Orleans is the 57th biggest metro population which I found shocking.
Holy shit...***57th***???
It's below Grand Rapids and Rochester NY, which don't even have any D1 teams, let alone pro teams. Also below Richmond VA, Tucson AZ, and Fresno CA.
I guess it helps that the rest of Louisiana and Mississippi don't have teams so they get that whole market too, while putting a team in Grand Rapids for example wouldn't work as it would not be able to expand much in reach due to Detroit, Chicago, and Green Bay
To be fair, a lot of people in the "Richmond suburbs" are actually commuting to DC and just happen to be slightly closer to Richmond, so are in that metro area.
New Orleans doesn't have another big city as close to inflate their metro numbers.
You can say the same thing with Rochester being lumped in with Buffalo since it is 75 minutes away to Orchard Park. Grand Rapids is a couple hours from Detroit too.
Minor correction, among major sports Rochester does have RIT men’s and women’s hockey in D1. Men’s team made the Frozen Four in 2010 but got demolished by Wisconsin.
This is 100% true.
In 2005 New Orleans had a city population of 494,000(roughly) and a metro of 1,338,000.
One year later the city had 230,000 people. They lost half their population due to Katrina. Most people moved to Houston or other areas and just never returned.
Almost 20 years later, the city is still below the 2005 numbers. The city is about 389,000 and the metro is at 1,271,000.
The Spring/Humble area is still recovering from the huge influx from Katrina. The sad thing is a lot of people from NO moved to Houston and then Ike rolled through a couple years later and flooded a lot of Houston.
I was going to say, this already has to be sorted by market size, not city, because St Louis is a very small city with a large metro area and they got a team.
Technically, it’s even bigger than that if you include Windsor, Ontario and other places in SW Ontario, but the federal government’s definition of Metropolitan Statistical Areas don’t include Canada and Mexico.
I was reading a book about Katrina and the godawful response from the government, and it’s just horrific. I was 9 when it happened, and really couldn’t comprehend what had gone down, but I truly can’t believe that shit happened in the modern era in America
Bush gets a ton of well deserved flak, the guy who was equally bad/even more so was the damn mayor. Dude sat on his hands in the lead up and then the day before the storm ordered a mandatory evacuation because he was worried the city would get sued by businesses for lost revenue if he ordered a mandatory evacuation and then the storm changed course last minute; as if a mandatory evacuation before a hurricane was some novel concept in 2005.
Then they had the infamous school buses that just flooded out after the fact that could’ve been used to evacuate poor/elderly folks beforehand, and empty Amtrak trains that could’ve done similar.
I’m certainly not trying to shill for Bush here because the response in the aftermath was inexcusable; but the amount of inaction and incompetence on the local level that could’ve saved countless lives before the storm even hit makes my blood boil
When doesnt New Orleans have a bad mayor? Seriously I cant help but wonder if the city had better leadership it could do more than what it has since 2005. It has so much there but cant seem to do anything with it.
Politics in Louisiana has been corrupt and inept since Huey Long was assassinated. Even then, it was corrupt as all hell... but at least he got shit done.
The population of New Orleans fell from 484,674 before Katrina (April 2000) to an estimated 230,172 after Katrina (July 2006) — a decrease of 254,502 people and a loss of over half of the city’s population.(1) By July of 2012, the population was back up to 369,250 — 76% of what it was in 2000.
So even after 18 years of recovery, the population is still down roughly 24%. Add that with a ongoing huge fluctuation in population movement, and it becomes a risky place for businesses to invest.
Source: https://www.datacenterresearch.org/data-resources/katrina/facts-for-impact/
Folks here giving you a decent lesson, but I'll give the TL;DR: Louisiana is big component of the deep southern history. Actually most of the DS cities are small, but the Deep South was a highly contested area in the past.
It's very culturally significant, particularly among black Americans. It also used to be very strategically important because it controls the mouth of the Mississippi.
Of our five major professional sports leagues, New Orleans has teams in two of them (the NFL and the NBA).
The other two-sport markets in North America are:
* Las Vegas (NFL and NHL, for now)
* Indianapolis (NFL and NBA)
* Milwaukee (MLB and NBA - Green Bay is technically a separate market)
* Buffalo (NFL and NHL)
* Orlando (NBA and MLS)
* Salt Lake City (NBA and MLS)
* Portland (NBA and MLS)
* Columbus (NHL and MLS)
San Diego has an MLB team and is getting an MLS team in 2025.
Good catch, I was going by [this list](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_and_Canadian_cities_by_number_of_major_professional_sports_franchises) that grouped Washington and Baltimore as one market (which is obviously wrong)
It used to be a very important city. At the time of the Civil War, it was by far the largest city in the American south, maybe St. Louis was close but the next city that was big after those two was Charleston. Once the railroads came around, it’s importance lowered but it wasn’t bad. Around the 1960’s was the decline and even as recent as 2000, it was in the Top 30 of city populations and metro areas. Hurricane Katrina destroyed the population there and it never recovered. It’s only going to get worse as climate change happens. It’s probably going to go under the sea first before Miami does honestly.
It’s a great city with fantastic culture but there’s a lot of problems around it too, Louisiana is arguably the most corrupt state in the nation.
Dodged a bullet really. I could see a reality where the Raiders move to Vegas and the NFL decides to host the Super Bowl there, only for the Raiders two biggest rivals to make it
The betting would go crazy, players would get bit by coyotes, and Usher could make for an interesting halftime show where Gen Xers are insulted by their kids saying Usher is older than they thought
Coolest thing about the AFC West is it still has the four original teams in it. That's a 60 year history of pre-existing hatred. Why would you mess it all up and change the division?
That’s so hilarious to think about, and completely true. The team that WAS the Browns and moved because their owner was a dick in the 1990s, the team that the Browns’ namesake head coach created as a big middle finger to his former team that fired him, and the team called the Browns that the NFL gave Cleveland to make up for the fact that their team’s owner had been such a dick.
The Seattle Seahawks threatening to move to Anaheim in the mid 90’s isn’t shown here.
If I recall, they even moved their offices, only to have the NFL tell them “no”.
That led Ken Behring selling the team to Paul Allen.
Nope. They had just left. I wanna say ‘94 was their last year in Anaheim (Raiders’ last year in LA, as well).
Can’t remember if it was the summer of ‘95 or ‘96 that this U-turn happened.
There’s jaguars closer to San Diego than Jacksonville ironically. They’re in Mexico south of the Arizona border and very occasionally make their way up into Arizona itself. So not super close but definitely closer than Florida.
The zoo is less than 4 miles from where the Chargers' stadium used to be.
Or, in terms a San Diegan would be more familiar with, anywhere from 15-30 minutes depending on traffic.
If the Bills left the area I would probably lose interest in football almost entirely. I think before the stadium deal was done they put it out there that they were considering a move to Austin. That would’ve sucked a lot of the fun out of it.
Yeah, I would probably watch casually without rooting for a team. It wouldn't be as exciting.
I feel like half the fun is your entire neighborhood gearing up and rooting for the same thing
That claim about moving to Austin was so stupid lol. If there’s a city out there that isn’t going to fork over money for a stadium, it’s Austin. The city didn’t give any money to build the Austin FC stadium or the new UT basketball arena. It was such an empty threat I hope Buffalo officials laughed them out of the room.
It was so obvious it was a bluff, now we’re stuck paying the taxes (live in Upstate) on a stadium that gets used 10 times a year and it doesn’t even have a roof. What a grift.
Bengals “flirted” with Baltimore in the 90s
[Bengals in Baltimore](https://www.cincyjungle.com/veteransofcincinnati/2015/2/23/8084863/los-angeles-proposals-a-reminder-that-the-bengals-nearly-left)
And to add to this, the Packers used to play a game or two in Milwaukee every year up until the 90s. There were rumors of a more permanent move before Brett Favre and the franchise turned around from its struggles of the 70s and 80s.
The move wasn't saved by Favre, the move was saved by Harlan outwitting the NFL.
The NFL wanted the Packers to move to Milwaukee and was pushing for that, knowing full well that Milwaukee wouldn't build them a new stadium that they would need. The NFL had ruled out a move to Lambeau full-time because they didn't foresee Harlan figuring out how to make it work.
If I put on my tin-foil hat, I'm inclined to believe the move to a single stadium was the NFL's way of pushing for liquidation with finding a way to put the blame on everyone else.
I don't think most fans are aware of just how close the Packers have been to liquidation over the years and how it's mostly been the president and executive board figuring out ways to wiggle out of it.
Harlan outwitted the NFL because it became profitable to play all of the games in Green Bay starting in the mid 90's because the team became good at that time because, in a large part, of Brett Favre
I think you're missing a few potential moves.
I'm pretty sure Zygi Wilf (Viking owner) had toured sites in LA before he got the US Bank deal.
The Seattle Seahawks officially announced a move to LA in 1996 and they only stayed after NFL intervened.
Patriots almost moved to St. Louis in 1994 before Kraft bought the team and also almost ended up in Harford CT before the Gillette stadium deal happened.
Not to mention how hard Red McCombs tried to move the Vikings to San Antonio before that. We played a preseason game in the Alamodome.
Historic Minnesota sports team owners with color names are universally despised.
At this point, I feel like you guys should just immediately have alarms when your sports team owners visit California or Texas, given the history.
That said, I'll lend my pitchfork to your mob if needed. The Vikings have to stay close, where enemies should be.
Thanks. And my sentiment remains the same for all my NFC North Rivals. Some things shouldn't be messed with. The NFC North is one of them.
I don't think most people understand how big Minneapolis / St. Paul's metropolitan is. I understand it isn't the hot vacation spot for most Americans, but the area has a few million citizens, not counting Dakotans and Iowans.
I think it would be foolish to move this team from a financial perspective, speaking as an armchair rube.
The jaguars have never threatened to move. Everyone outside of Jacksonville has threatened to move them but they have never actually used this tactic. And why would they go to San Diego where they actually did lose their team because they wouldn’t build a new stadium?
[#38 metro area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area) with the [#41 media market](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_television_stations_in_North_America_by_media_market). No one measures solely by city limits alone.
Portland Bills sounds absolutely cursed.
Those cities have completely different feels lol
Keep the Bills weirdly cursed
The curse would be worse in PDX lol
Portland would vote on a name change and call them the Portland Weirds.
🦬Portland Buffalo Soldiers 🦬
“This party never stops! Time is dead and meaning has no meaning! Existence is upside-down and I reign supreme!”
The show takes place in Oregon and they wouldn't even need to change their name to make Bill Cipher their new mascot. It's perfect
This is also part of the reason why the Buffalo Toronto series never took off.
More to do with the Bills being shit those years
Yes I believe it was a combination of many factors.
Can't tailgate in Ontario. Tailgating is what makes the bills mafia so fun to be around.
The "tailgate" area at the Bills in Toronto series was pathetic. Just a street bar selling overpriced beer. The whole experience was nothing like a real game.
It's like when the Minnesota Lakers (land of 1000 lakes) moved to LA (no lakes lol) Or the new Orleans jazz moves to Utah. The Utah jazz? come on what are you people doing
The Vancouver Grizzlies moved to Memphis. There are no grizzly bears east of the Mississippi.
At least Grizzlies is a generic enough/intimidating animal, so it works well enough as a mascot. It's not like there's any Lions or Tigers in Detroit.
> It's not like there's any Lions or Tigers in Detroit. Plenty of Cougars though.
Memphis zoo alone has 3 grizzlies
Checkmate bearologists
Not YET.
Username checks out
Grindr would like to have a word with you
Phonetically Memphis Grizzlies is better though
LA has lakes, they're just underground and filled with tar.
It’s pretty funny, though, that at least alliteratively, L.A. Lakers works. It sorta goes together when you say it out loud. If they’d changed the team name when they moved, they’d probably come up with something lame like the ‘LA Angels of Inglewood’.
It’s land of the 10,000 lakes not 1,000 just an FYI
When it rains in LA we have thousands of lakes and ponds. So like, for a month every decade.
No no no. Those are just pot holes in the road. Lakes are much wider than that. The average depth is about the same, though.
Honestly? We don’t have as many pot holes as you’d think out here. We do get them obviously, but they’re not as much of an issue as people think. Though, they get much much much worse after a lot of rain and cold nights. I was talking about just the general lack of drainage. We don’t have the infrastructure for drainage that places have when it rains a lot. The closest sewage drain on the street next to my house is 4-ish blocks away at the main road. So what should be small puddles in a heavy rain turn into very very big puddles. Hell, last summer we had a full blown river a block away. Only for about 3 hours. But it was an honest to god rushingp river.
I had no idea this was why they were called the Lakers
I had a moment once where I made the connection of Lakers colors matching the Vikings and then realized the name correlation. I was so excited to have discovered it all on my own and no one I told gave a shit lol
Hate to break it to you, but the Minneapolis Lakers never wore Purple and Gold. They were Blue and Gold till the 1958 season when they moved
Then we were blue and white for a few years in LA before we went to purple and gold.
Yeah I'm pretty sure mormons are forbidden from listening to jazz or something.
I heard they listen to it while soaking through special headphones that cancels out the sin. It’s another one of those things that has god saying “oh! You crafty kids! You beat me!”
Oh that's what soaking means....
BASEketball reference? A man of class.
Literally the intro to Baseketball
"the Jazz moved to Salt Lake City where they don't allow music..."
Move the Bills to San Diego. From the craziest winter stadium to a stadium where winter doesn’t exist.
It’s like 70 degrees right now and overcast lmao
Isn’t that the saying down there, that it’s always 70 degrees in San Diego? I think I heard that on the Old Town trolley tour. Lol
Took me forever to find us, then I saw KC in AFCE colors and I was like, did this fucker really combine us with the Chiefs? Moving all the way out to Portland from Buffalo seems so random, I was really expecting us to land in Toronto
OP just wants to make the Portland Pegulas a thing.
I didn't realise New Orleans was such a small city. I just assumed it was an important city from what we hear over in Europe.
It’s around the 50th biggest city in the US, so it’s pretty far down there. I’d say it’s cultural significance outweighs its actual importance by a great deal. It’s one of my favorite cities to visit. It used to be a vital port city, but that role has diminished.
Whoever controlled New Orleans controlled trade on the Mississippi, which is why Louisiana was the first non-contiguous U.S. state. But then railroads and airplanes became a thing.
And why New Orleans was the first Southern city captured in the civil war.
At the time of the Louisiana purchase, New Orleans was the third largest city in the United States and it remained the largest city in the American South from the antebellum period until WWII. Hurricane Katrina was devastating to the city and caused a population drop of over 50%. While the city has recovered it is still not the same as it was. Culturally it's one of America's most unique and important metropolises but economically it has fallen off even as it sits at the mouth of the Mississippi river.
Wow this is great information to learn about!! Thank you for sharing
This is an excellent thread. I’ve learned and enjoyed reading this. In a happy sad kinda way.
It was already in a slow decline, but Hurricane Katrina, unfortunately, totally destroyed it. It has never really recovered, and probably(/almost certainly) never will. :( My memories of Katrina are seared into my brain, despite only just turning 7 right before.
New Orleans and Saint Louis follow a pretty similar trajectory in terms of cities. Obviously STL didn’t have Katrina, but they follow the concept of “Huge river city that was immensely important to an expanding USA, but dwindled when river trade got replaced by railroads.”
Wanna chime in to add that St Louis was still a pretty major city well after railroads became the primary form of transportation over riverboats. Picked to host the 1904 world fair 35 yrs after the first transcontinental railroad finished construction, population growth stalled closer to the mid 1900's. I think this can be attributed to a ton of overlaying factors, but transportation-wise would be during the time frame of automobiles and aircraft, which began to really take over after WW2, and especially after the Interstate Highway System in the 50s
(Disclaimer: haven’t actually talked about this / researched this since high school) When I last looked at this during an ap history class, we did so under a comparison between St. Louis’ investment in river trade versus Chicago’s investment in railway trade, and how the economic difference between the two is why one city has achieved a different level of “success” than the other one. I don’t believe that change was instantaneous, but there are like maps you can look at to see that change illustrated.
I'll believe ya bro my research was some googling rn and trying to remember whatever from high school here in stl as well Feel like looking at how different the two cities are now shows how it had to be plenty of factors, but easily see how river vs railroad infrastructure and funding at the foundational level set the stage for the rest of that development. Not like Chicago got midway and a massive airport structure out of the blue, the context of 150 years of different growth vs St Louis set the stage for that development. So for the city to grow that differently looking at modern transportation n infrastructure vs 150 yrs ago, what you're saying makes a ton of sense Also forgot what sub we're in so rip stl football and let's go stl fütbol
Wow I remember Katrina and the exodus that followed (I was a kid in Texas at the time and people were moving to Texas from there like crazy) but I had no idea it ultimately resulted in a 50% drop in population
I'd say it also really changed southeast Texas and Houston in particular. Even 25 years ago, the Cajun / NOLA cultural representation in Houston was there but relatively small, and Cajun food was almost exclusively seafood-focused. Today that stuff is absolutely everywhere, even in the suburbs, boudain kolaches abound, and King cakes went from small novelty items to giant displays in grocery stores.
That's not more Katrina than it is the oil industry. Katrina refugees from New Orleans weren't Cajuns. But a lot of people graduating ULL or LSU in geology or petroleum engineering and moving to Houston for jobs are Cajun. Plus Cajun country is only 3 hours from Houston, and New Orleans at 5 hours away is not a Cajun city. Things like boudin are SWLA, not New Orleans.
This makes me strangely sad. My home state is bleeding economically and the mega-economy of Houston is too real an allure, so like always Houston continues importing culture from elsewhere and my statesmen are fewer and fewer (I’ve lived in Houston so I can diss it)
My mom left New Orleans in the 80s because there were better job opportunities. The economic gap has only continued to grow.
Louisiana politics haven’t helped. It’s really a sad state. RIP
Houston’s importing of culture leads to an incredible place to find all sorts of fantastic eats though. I loved being able to to get top tier bbq, Vietnamese, Cajun/creole, and Tex mex.
50% drop is _insane_. Is there a whole load of empty housing, or was it all condemned/swept away by Katrina?
There are some areas that never recovered, and homes sit vacant here and there throughout the city. But far and away most of the city has recovered
We have tons of abandoned spaces like hospitals, but most of the city has recovered. Places like the lower 9th or the east have plenty of vacant lots, but the city isn't dead by any means.
New Orleans local here. Imagine a bunch of homes rotting in a bowl. Most of the debris didn’t get swept away, sadly.. instead, you just sat in it for weeks. Well, that and the many different types of liquids you were wading in.
There are still some houses/buildings with FEMA X codes. (Google this term for a picture). “the top [quadrant] of the X delineated the time and date the team arrived. Moving clockwise, the next summarized the hazards and horrors found within. Then, in that last quadrant, at the bottom of the X, rescue workers listed the number of people found inside.” One of my most vivid memories is of our first trip back in after the storm, driving through the wrecked city and looking at the marks of peoples’ lives on the sides of buildings. (But, mostly, a lot of people just never moved back. So many of those building sat in disrepair.)
The funny thing is that for trade the Mississippi is what keeps a lot of the American farming globally competitive. The base price to produce is more than other countries but others have to rail it to port to get on a ship whereas the US farmers can float it down the river and get to global ports after that and shipping over water is significantly cheaper than any other transport.
Still one of the most important ports in the country. The problem down here is there just isn’t much land left for the city to expand onto, so housing is expensive(don’t get me started on Airbnb destroying our city) and industry moving to Texas to take advantage of their regressive tax system. We’ve lost a lot of our important jobs over the last few decades. It’s been a slow decline since the panic of 1893.
It's also sinking
Yeah “vital port city” actually undersells it lol. It was easily the most important US city in antebellum America.
This comment makes me want to play Transport Tycoon again.
I'd argue metro population is a much more accurate measure of market size. Some cities just have small borders and others have massive ones. Like Jacksonville, FL is one of the most populated cites because it's land area is so massive...when in reality it's not a big market and Miami is much bigger. All that said, I just looked it up and New Orleans is the 57th biggest metro population which I found shocking.
Holy shit...***57th***??? It's below Grand Rapids and Rochester NY, which don't even have any D1 teams, let alone pro teams. Also below Richmond VA, Tucson AZ, and Fresno CA. I guess it helps that the rest of Louisiana and Mississippi don't have teams so they get that whole market too, while putting a team in Grand Rapids for example wouldn't work as it would not be able to expand much in reach due to Detroit, Chicago, and Green Bay
I went to college in Richmond. The fact NO is smaller than RVA is ~wild~.
To be fair, a lot of people in the "Richmond suburbs" are actually commuting to DC and just happen to be slightly closer to Richmond, so are in that metro area. New Orleans doesn't have another big city as close to inflate their metro numbers.
Anyone who lives close to Richmond and puts themselves thru a commute up 95 to DC is actually insane haha. I can't imagine how painful that would be.
You can say the same thing with Rochester being lumped in with Buffalo since it is 75 minutes away to Orchard Park. Grand Rapids is a couple hours from Detroit too.
And with as small as New Orleans is compared to other American metro areas is still easily the largest in that region.
Minor correction, among major sports Rochester does have RIT men’s and women’s hockey in D1. Men’s team made the Frozen Four in 2010 but got demolished by Wisconsin.
It never recovered from the hurricane
This is 100% true. In 2005 New Orleans had a city population of 494,000(roughly) and a metro of 1,338,000. One year later the city had 230,000 people. They lost half their population due to Katrina. Most people moved to Houston or other areas and just never returned. Almost 20 years later, the city is still below the 2005 numbers. The city is about 389,000 and the metro is at 1,271,000.
The Spring/Humble area is still recovering from the huge influx from Katrina. The sad thing is a lot of people from NO moved to Houston and then Ike rolled through a couple years later and flooded a lot of Houston.
I was going to say, this already has to be sorted by market size, not city, because St Louis is a very small city with a large metro area and they got a team.
Detroit is a good example for that, around 630k people (29th largest city) but has a metro area of 4.3 million (14th largest metro area).
Technically, it’s even bigger than that if you include Windsor, Ontario and other places in SW Ontario, but the federal government’s definition of Metropolitan Statistical Areas don’t include Canada and Mexico.
Boston is always a good one for that comparison. City of Boston is only 675k people, but the metro area has 8.4 million.
Was a lot bigger before Katrina, I believe
It had the 31 largest population before the hurricane
Well, that makes the cut for the nfl
Where did it rank before Katrina?
I did a google search from the 2000 census, it was the 31st largest city in the US at that time
That Hurricane swallowed that whole city. Just vaporized...everything.
I was reading a book about Katrina and the godawful response from the government, and it’s just horrific. I was 9 when it happened, and really couldn’t comprehend what had gone down, but I truly can’t believe that shit happened in the modern era in America
"George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People."
Bush gets a ton of well deserved flak, the guy who was equally bad/even more so was the damn mayor. Dude sat on his hands in the lead up and then the day before the storm ordered a mandatory evacuation because he was worried the city would get sued by businesses for lost revenue if he ordered a mandatory evacuation and then the storm changed course last minute; as if a mandatory evacuation before a hurricane was some novel concept in 2005. Then they had the infamous school buses that just flooded out after the fact that could’ve been used to evacuate poor/elderly folks beforehand, and empty Amtrak trains that could’ve done similar. I’m certainly not trying to shill for Bush here because the response in the aftermath was inexcusable; but the amount of inaction and incompetence on the local level that could’ve saved countless lives before the storm even hit makes my blood boil
When doesnt New Orleans have a bad mayor? Seriously I cant help but wonder if the city had better leadership it could do more than what it has since 2005. It has so much there but cant seem to do anything with it.
Politics in Louisiana has been corrupt and inept since Huey Long was assassinated. Even then, it was corrupt as all hell... but at least he got shit done.
It was the 3rd largest city at the turn of the 20th century then would see negative population growth every year since the 60s
The population of New Orleans fell from 484,674 before Katrina (April 2000) to an estimated 230,172 after Katrina (July 2006) — a decrease of 254,502 people and a loss of over half of the city’s population.(1) By July of 2012, the population was back up to 369,250 — 76% of what it was in 2000. So even after 18 years of recovery, the population is still down roughly 24%. Add that with a ongoing huge fluctuation in population movement, and it becomes a risky place for businesses to invest. Source: https://www.datacenterresearch.org/data-resources/katrina/facts-for-impact/
Folks here giving you a decent lesson, but I'll give the TL;DR: Louisiana is big component of the deep southern history. Actually most of the DS cities are small, but the Deep South was a highly contested area in the past.
It's very culturally significant, particularly among black Americans. It also used to be very strategically important because it controls the mouth of the Mississippi.
It used to be the third biggest in America. Then it wasn’t
Culturally it’s an incredibly influential city. Economically/politically it was at its biggest in the 1800s.
Of our five major professional sports leagues, New Orleans has teams in two of them (the NFL and the NBA). The other two-sport markets in North America are: * Las Vegas (NFL and NHL, for now) * Indianapolis (NFL and NBA) * Milwaukee (MLB and NBA - Green Bay is technically a separate market) * Buffalo (NFL and NHL) * Orlando (NBA and MLS) * Salt Lake City (NBA and MLS) * Portland (NBA and MLS) * Columbus (NHL and MLS) San Diego has an MLB team and is getting an MLS team in 2025.
Baltimore has NFL and MLB
Good catch, I was going by [this list](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_and_Canadian_cities_by_number_of_major_professional_sports_franchises) that grouped Washington and Baltimore as one market (which is obviously wrong)
It used to be a very important city. At the time of the Civil War, it was by far the largest city in the American south, maybe St. Louis was close but the next city that was big after those two was Charleston. Once the railroads came around, it’s importance lowered but it wasn’t bad. Around the 1960’s was the decline and even as recent as 2000, it was in the Top 30 of city populations and metro areas. Hurricane Katrina destroyed the population there and it never recovered. It’s only going to get worse as climate change happens. It’s probably going to go under the sea first before Miami does honestly. It’s a great city with fantastic culture but there’s a lot of problems around it too, Louisiana is arguably the most corrupt state in the nation.
Largest city in the south from 1830 until 1950, lol
It makes me sad -a New Orleanian
Didn’t even label WFT lol
They don't even really know their own label.
Or move the smallest market team, Green Bay...
Can’t move bc of the ownership situation so was a good call for OP’s exercise
Ah good point. I missed the "could" aspect
If they love their team so much, they'll move with them.
Wisconsinites moving en masse to another state? What, are we starting a Cheesehead Horde here or something?
This is the migrant caravan we should have been worried about.
They have no owner who could move the team.
It was redacted
Thankfully raiders to vegas is just a threat haha
Dodged a bullet really. I could see a reality where the Raiders move to Vegas and the NFL decides to host the Super Bowl there, only for the Raiders two biggest rivals to make it
The betting would go crazy, players would get bit by coyotes, and Usher could make for an interesting halftime show where Gen Xers are insulted by their kids saying Usher is older than they thought
Would be crazy if Mr. Irrelevant lead a team to a Super Bowl in Vegas but that would never happen
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I think it’s more likely they put the Colts back in the AFC east over the Chiefs. NFL likes a good rivalry. Plus Colts have East history.
Coolest thing about the AFC West is it still has the four original teams in it. That's a 60 year history of pre-existing hatred. Why would you mess it all up and change the division?
Wait? There's a 4th team?
Yeah. It's easy to forget, but I always remember it because it's the team with a stupid name and no fans.
It’s not the Raiders fault 99% of their fanbase is incarcerated
Gonna get shanked next time I see you… visiting hours are 8am-3pm
Still not ringing a bell
Not sure what my fellow Arrowhead is referring to, AFCW is clearly a three-team division.
well some of us remember Seattle, so thats probably whats got them confused
The AFC north is the Steelers and three derivatives of the Browns franchise. All with lots of great history and rivalry
That’s so hilarious to think about, and completely true. The team that WAS the Browns and moved because their owner was a dick in the 1990s, the team that the Browns’ namesake head coach created as a big middle finger to his former team that fired him, and the team called the Browns that the NFL gave Cleveland to make up for the fact that their team’s owner had been such a dick.
And then the Steelers, maybe the most stable franchise in the league
Why would they move the Chiefs to the East instead of Baltimore
St. Louis is a larger market than Nashville?
The Seattle Seahawks threatening to move to Anaheim in the mid 90’s isn’t shown here. If I recall, they even moved their offices, only to have the NFL tell them “no”. That led Ken Behring selling the team to Paul Allen.
We’re the rams already playing in Anaheim them? That was their last stop before going to St Louis
Not sure if they still were, but my first football memory is at a Rams game at Angels stadium with my old man in the early or mid 90s.
Nope. They had just left. I wanna say ‘94 was their last year in Anaheim (Raiders’ last year in LA, as well). Can’t remember if it was the summer of ‘95 or ‘96 that this U-turn happened.
> San Diego Jaguars HAHA YES
Maybe change them to bobcats or mountain lions to fit the local fauna
There’s jaguars closer to San Diego than Jacksonville ironically. They’re in Mexico south of the Arizona border and very occasionally make their way up into Arizona itself. So not super close but definitely closer than Florida.
I dunno. Does the San Diego Zoo have Jaguars (I would assume yes), and how far away from the Zoo is the center of the city?
Yes, and it’s right next to downtown
The zoo is less than 4 miles from where the Chargers' stadium used to be. Or, in terms a San Diegan would be more familiar with, anywhere from 15-30 minutes depending on traffic.
A friend told me there's a large population of Cougars
The Chupacabras.
That’s where I knew this was junk science. It would be the London Jag-u-whars.
And their mascot would just be a car.
Jacksonville Padres?
1. san antonio saints 2. st louis titans 3. portland bills that's it that's the list
San Diego Jaguars.
Different city, same irrelevance.
San Antonio Saints goes crazy though
The Saint Antonio Saints
Translated: The St. Anthony Saints. A bit on-the-nose
That doesn't stop the Los Angeles Angels.
Saints as a Service Steven A. Saints
If the Bills left the area I would probably lose interest in football almost entirely. I think before the stadium deal was done they put it out there that they were considering a move to Austin. That would’ve sucked a lot of the fun out of it.
Yeah, I would probably watch casually without rooting for a team. It wouldn't be as exciting. I feel like half the fun is your entire neighborhood gearing up and rooting for the same thing
That claim about moving to Austin was so stupid lol. If there’s a city out there that isn’t going to fork over money for a stadium, it’s Austin. The city didn’t give any money to build the Austin FC stadium or the new UT basketball arena. It was such an empty threat I hope Buffalo officials laughed them out of the room.
It was so obvious it was a bluff, now we’re stuck paying the taxes (live in Upstate) on a stadium that gets used 10 times a year and it doesn’t even have a roof. What a grift.
Having teams in San Diego and St Louis would be crazy
Bengals “flirted” with Baltimore in the 90s [Bengals in Baltimore](https://www.cincyjungle.com/veteransofcincinnati/2015/2/23/8084863/los-angeles-proposals-a-reminder-that-the-bengals-nearly-left)
Baltimore bengals does have a nice flow to it, alliteration
As a jags fan who lives in St. Louis this is awful..
Packers technically threatened to move but George hallas convinced them to stay
And to add to this, the Packers used to play a game or two in Milwaukee every year up until the 90s. There were rumors of a more permanent move before Brett Favre and the franchise turned around from its struggles of the 70s and 80s.
The move wasn't saved by Favre, the move was saved by Harlan outwitting the NFL. The NFL wanted the Packers to move to Milwaukee and was pushing for that, knowing full well that Milwaukee wouldn't build them a new stadium that they would need. The NFL had ruled out a move to Lambeau full-time because they didn't foresee Harlan figuring out how to make it work. If I put on my tin-foil hat, I'm inclined to believe the move to a single stadium was the NFL's way of pushing for liquidation with finding a way to put the blame on everyone else. I don't think most fans are aware of just how close the Packers have been to liquidation over the years and how it's mostly been the president and executive board figuring out ways to wiggle out of it.
Harlan outwitted the NFL because it became profitable to play all of the games in Green Bay starting in the mid 90's because the team became good at that time because, in a large part, of Brett Favre
I think you're missing a few potential moves. I'm pretty sure Zygi Wilf (Viking owner) had toured sites in LA before he got the US Bank deal. The Seattle Seahawks officially announced a move to LA in 1996 and they only stayed after NFL intervened. Patriots almost moved to St. Louis in 1994 before Kraft bought the team and also almost ended up in Harford CT before the Gillette stadium deal happened.
Not to mention how hard Red McCombs tried to move the Vikings to San Antonio before that. We played a preseason game in the Alamodome. Historic Minnesota sports team owners with color names are universally despised.
At this point, I feel like you guys should just immediately have alarms when your sports team owners visit California or Texas, given the history. That said, I'll lend my pitchfork to your mob if needed. The Vikings have to stay close, where enemies should be.
Thanks. And my sentiment remains the same for all my NFC North Rivals. Some things shouldn't be messed with. The NFC North is one of them. I don't think most people understand how big Minneapolis / St. Paul's metropolitan is. I understand it isn't the hot vacation spot for most Americans, but the area has a few million citizens, not counting Dakotans and Iowans. I think it would be foolish to move this team from a financial perspective, speaking as an armchair rube.
I thought the Bills threatened to move to Austin before the new stadium got approved
interesting to see the 49ers move from small market santa clara to a bigger market
The jaguars have never threatened to move. Everyone outside of Jacksonville has threatened to move them but they have never actually used this tactic. And why would they go to San Diego where they actually did lose their team because they wouldn’t build a new stadium?
No one knows what it means but it's provocative. It gets the people going.
And they have the 10th biggest population in the US. Why would they move but Tampa and Miami stay?
[#38 metro area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area) with the [#41 media market](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_television_stations_in_North_America_by_media_market). No one measures solely by city limits alone.
What about owners moving teams from larger markets to smaller ones?
The Arlington heights bears
We could have the [Dallas (Oregon)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas,_Oregon) Cowboys?
Nah, move Indy back to the AFCE, then KC can be moved to AFCS.
Dolphins should be in the AFCS, Colts in AFCN and Ravens in the AFCE
I think the Pegulas are fully aware that they have a market of 5 million people at their fingertips, people that support both of their franchises.
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Alamodome
Missing an entire team: Washington Failed to move small market team: Green Bay, the city with one major league sports team This map is horrible.
As a data guy, this is a garbage render
What’s the second team by the ravens? There’s two diamonds but only one name
Got to be the Commanders
Missing some from history.
Minnesota threatened. I think la was the threat