A Fight For Fans In Corpus Christi
Joshua Espitia
Tuesday January 16, 2007
After a string of recent successes, another professional sports league has decided to call Corpus Christi home. The city has demonstrated the ability to support hockey, baseball, and a homegrown indoor football league, all of which have generated tremendous fan bases that seem to fill the seats even when seasons overlap. Now the af2 has come to town with an expansion team – the Corpus Christi Sharks – to test the waters.
I don’t know about the rest of the city, but I have high hopes. Nearly 2,000 people submitted entries in the "Name the Team" contest, and to me that is a good indication of community interest. If you add in that most of the people I’ve talked to about the team is excited for the upcoming season, it looks like folks in Corpus Christi are ready for another quality choice for sports entertainment. After all this is Texas, and it is football. There is just one little problem.
The afore-mentioned homegrown football league is still in operation. The Intense Football League, founded in 2004 by Corpus Christi resident Chad Dittman, didn’t want to leave. His team, the Corpus Christi Hammerheads, called the American Bank Center home until losing their lease in 2006. The Sharks will be moving into the American Bank Center this season, while the Hammerheads have moved to a smaller venue at the Nueces County Fairgrounds. This created some controversy when it was announced, but I think there is a bigger issue.
Think about the Raider Nation for a minute; now the Hogs; now let your mind settle on any member of the general population of the city of Green Bay or the state of Texas and you get the idea. Football fans are fiercely loyal. In a state where guys that played high school football twenty years ago still go to cheer on their alma maters in musty, class of ‘86 letter jackets and hold contempt, even real hatred, for old rivals, well, you can see where pushing one team aside unceremoniously in favor of another might be a little upsetting.
One Hammerheads fan I spoke with referred to the Sharks as the "Corpus Christi Lying Bastards." He did this in reference to the denial that SMG, the group that manages the American Bank Center, gave when asked if they had kicked out the Hammerheads because they were actively courting an af2 franchise. According to SMG, the Hammerheads had failed to comply with the lease agreement and therefore forfeited their right to use the facility. A short time later it was announced that an af2 franchise would indeed play in Corpus Christi at the American Bank Center. The circumstances were fishy, if you’ll excuse the pun, at best.
While the Hammerheads fan later absolved the Sharks organization of any wrongdoing and placed the blame solely with SMG, he still refused to go to any Sharks’ games. He has a closet full of Hammerheads jerseys, as do his wife and kids. He’s also invested his time and heart in cheering for his team, and they rewarded him with good football and a trip to the IFL championship game. As far as he’s concerned, they’ve earned his loyalty. While he and his family are just one example, they’re part of a larger group that feels the same way. Fortunately I’ve encountered two more distinct types of potential Sharks fan.
There is one group of people in Corpus Christi that had little or no interest in the previous occupants of the American Bank Center. It’s not that these folks don’t like football (I’ll reiterate that this is in fact Texas), they just didn’t see the old team, or league for that matter, as particularly organized, fan friendly, or talented. Most of these people never attended a Hammerheads game, so their views are largely based on speculation, but around here when someone makes up their mind about something nothing is going to change it. Many of these people formed their opinion based on the newness of the league. The IFL had not been established and to them that indicated low quality. Enter the af2.
With the coming of an established league, one with national connections to what could be considered a major league in the AFL, and these guys get excited. These are the people that made the Corpus Christi Hooks, the city’s Texas League baseball club, worth a brand new multimillion-dollar stadium. They want high quality action, and they sell out venues when they get it. Getting this group into the seats shouldn’t be a problem for the Sharks. Most of them have already decided that the af2 is the only game in town. If the Sharks deliver excellence on the gridiron they will have secured these fans for life.
Management and ownership know where they stand with these two groups. That degree of certainty is nice to have even if it means realizing that some people cannot be won over. In a city of nearly 300,000 and a surrounding area bringing the total closer to half a million, the numbers you lose can be gained elsewhere. They may come from the pool that never go to sporting events or that aren’t regular supporters of any team, but those people decide on their own, and only from time to time. They act on a whim. To them, a sporting event is an afternoon of entertainment, much like a movie, that can be enjoyed and then forgotten. Nothing wins them and nothing loses them; they are random, abstract figures. They’re nice enough people, but they aren’t valid in this argument.
No, the real third group is a wildcard. They are unpredictable and impetuous. Much like Cold War era Soviet pilots landing at NATO air bases, they are defectors. Whichever team offers the highest return on these fans’ time will earn their loyalty. This may include lower ticket prices, giveaways, hospitality services, and most importantly exciting football. Meet these demands and ticket sales will increase, or decrease, accordingly.
That’s what Corpus Christi football, in all of its forms, has to draw on. The Sharks and the af2 have everything to gain by establishing a foothold in the community and then securing a relationship with key groups of fans. If some can’t be wooed, so be it. The people of Corpus Christi and the Coastal Bend have shown that they are willing to support multiple teams in the same sport in the past, and Sharks general manager Brett Stenner is confident they will do so now.
When all of the facts and speculations are weighed, the conclusion that can be drawn is this: a little cross-town rivalry has never been a bad thing. The early controversy and passions of both teams’ fans may do more to bolster ticket sales and staying power more than winning the Arena Cup or IFL championship ever could. After all, the Clippers and the Jets still draw fans, don’t they? Corpus Christi is hungry for football, and two kinds of oceanic carnivores are willing to provide a feast. Fans of all kinds can hardly wait for the feeding frenzy to begin.
