Not even the Alamodome’s decades of failure to lure an NFL team or the flop of yet another SA football franchise appear to have dimmed the city’s gridiron dreams.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg tells both KSAT and ESPN Radio that the city’s prepping a pitch to woo the NFL Draft. While Saytown doesn’t have an NFL franchise — usually, but not always, a big hurdle to landing a draft — the mayor says its track record hosting sporting events such as the Final Four strengthens its hand.
“We are a destination city,” Nirenberg told KSAT. “We pull off major sporting events better than any city in the country, and that has been on display for a long time.”
It probably doesn’t hurt either that San Antonio posted compelling attendance numbers before the eight-city Alliance of American Football deflated last year.
Will those arguments convince the NFL? Most likely, we’ll need to wait before we find out.
The draft will be held in Las Vegas this year, Cleveland in 2021 and Kansas City in 2023. The 2022 is yet undecided.
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This article appears in Jan 29 – Feb 11, 2020.
