There is one simple rule that every chief executive in history, be it a student council president, the President of the United States, or the commissioner of baseball, needs to follow. You cannot make everyone happy. There are some decisions that need to be made that are not easy and will make some people upset. This is part of the job. Somehow, Bud Selig missed that part of training. After taking a ton of flak from Astros fans and players alike for moving two home games to Milwaukee in Hurricane Ike's wake, Bud apologized today in the Houston Chronicle.
"I recognized the advantage the Cubs would have in playing in such close proximity to Chicago, and had there been a better option, I would have taken it," Selig wrote in the ad on page C16 of the Sports section.
"All of us involved in the decision regret the frustration the Astros and their fans felt about playing two games in Milwaukee."
There wasn't really a choice Selig could've made that would've made everyone happy. Owner Drayton McLane was slow to postpone the games in Houston for fear of losing the gate, while other, closer big league parks were already occupied on the Sunday and Monday the games needed to be played. Playing in Milwaukee wasn't the best option, but it wasn't the worst either. That would've been squeezing three games into two days after the season ended while the Astros fought for a playoff spot against the Iowa Cubs. The Astros had a right to be mad, but they need to move past this. Selig made a decision and needs to stand by it. His pandering to Houston fans with a weak non-apology is only making things worse.
Trying to beat the Titans on the road was already going to be a difficult task for the Texans: The Texans have played poorly on the road since Gary Kubiak was their coach. The offensive line is incorporating new starters and a new scheme, and like many teams, have struggled in the past against the Titans defensive line. And the Texans defense has just been bad.
Since Hurricane Ike devastated the Houston-Galveston area, many of the players have mentioned how much they want to win this upcoming game for the fans suffering from the storm. As LB DeMeco Ryans discussed:
It's very big for us. We plan on not only playing for ourselves, but for everyone around the city, everyone around the state of Texas that's looking to sort of get back to a normal life. Everybody loves to watch football. So, hopefully we can do that for our fans here and for our hometown here in Houston, get back on the winning side of things.
Who knows how many people in the Houston area will even be able to watch the game by Sunday. As of this morning, there are still about 1,400,000 households without power in the area. A large portion of the eastern and southern sides of the city are predicted not to have power into next week or longer. Those are huge numbers hard to really comprehend.
Since the Astros road trip to play Milwaukee in the wake of Hurricane Ike, they're 0-5. That puts them five games out of the wild card, which might as well be 100 games out at this late point in the season. They're upset with Bud Selig, but until now they've done a good job keeping mostly silent. Now, though, the Houston Chronicle has spotted players wearing protest t-shirts.
"We survived Ike," the back of the shirt read in red lettering atop a drawing of the radar impression of the eye of the storm.
On the front, it read: "Bud killed us," over a red drawing of the commissioner's bust.
It's impossible to know what would've happened if the Cubs/Astros series had been moved somewhere closer to Houston or postponed until later in the year, but it's certainly understandable for the 'Stros' players to be upset. The storm was vicious, there are stil stories like this one coming out of the Houston area, and the league did very little to accomodate the Astros. I realize that there's not much the league can do, but it seems like they didn't even do that.
The Astros, on the other hand, are doing their best to help out even in the face of the collapse of their playoff hopes. FanHouser and Houstonian Stephanie Stradley just e-mailed me today to tell me that the Astros have donated $1 miillion to the Gulf Coast Ike Relief Fund (a cause that could certainly use as much help as possible ... just sayin'). Because really, missing the playoffs isn't the end of the world and if anyone knows it, it's the Astros.
With Reliant Stadium losing five roof tiles in Hurricane Ike and the Texans not being completely sure when the roof will be ready for play, they've gotten an interesting offer for a temporary home - Minute Maid Park, crosstown home of the Astros. I don't know if there have been any serious discussions about this, but Astros' owner Drayton McLane told the Houston Chronicle today that he'd be willing to lend Minute Maid Park to the Texans until Reliant Stadium is ready to go.
This probably isn't going to be necessary since Texans owner Bob McNair sounds confident that Reliant will be ready by October 5th and is considering playing at Rice's stadium if it's not. There's also the issue of whether or not a football field, complete with sidelines, end zones, and goal posts could even fit into the unique dimensions of Minute Maid. I don't think fantasy owners would be happy to see Andre Johnson go down with a twisted ankle on that goofy hill they have in center field.
Of course, the damage to the stadiums and where the Texans play isn't all that important in the grand scheme of things. As Stephanie Stradley has noted, many of the players saw damage to their houses during Ike and there are still a lot of people without power and water in and around Houston. It would be great for the Texans to play that October 5th game against the Colts at home, but it's understandable if fixing Reliant is low on the "things to do" list in Houston, especially with other viable nearby locations for the game.
As you probably know, the NFL made the decision to shuffle the NFL schedule due to Hurricane Ike's damage to Reliant Stadium. The Ravens, Bengals and Texans have had their games and bye weeks switched around to deal with the mess.
Though most Raven and Bengal fans have been extremely understanding of these changes, some are bitter about what this does to their season, and they are bitter at the Texans for not agreeing to go to a neutral site or Baltimore this weekend.
I think those people are sick, ill-informed and/or hopelessly misguided. As a Houstonian, I've have had very little sleep the last couple of days, so I am cranky and would like to punch those sort of people in the face.
The above picture is not a beautiful lake. It is what my front yard looked like at 8:00 am this morning as flood waters retreated. I live 60 miles from the coast. We didn't get flooded during Hurricane Ike, but we almost did today due to residual torrential rain and storm sewers blocked with toppled trees and debris.
The NFL made a quick and decisive decision that because of Hurricane Ikeno football was getting played in Houston this weekend, canceling the Texans - Ravens game and shifting around bye weeks so we would never actually know the difference. This makes a ton of sense -- after all, no one needs a bye week more right now than the city of Houston and its football team.
However, because it's already mid-September and there's a playoff race going on, baseball probably didn't feel comfortable trying to find a later slot for the Cubs - Astros series that was scheduled in Houston this weekend. So they're gonna play in Milwaukee instead.
The Astros and Cubs will play a 7:05 p.m. CT game Sunday at Miller Park, a 1:05 p.m CT game on Monday and a third game on the 29th, if necessary. The Astros will be the home team.
The decision arrived less than 24 hours after Hurricane Ike, labeled as a Category 2 but only one mph short of qualifying for a Category 3, slammed into Galveston and made its way up to Houston, home to nearly four million residents.
Kudos to MLB for getting these games moved out of harm's way and letting baseball take place -- natural disasters will not short change Bud Selig! Tie All Star Games? Maybe. But natural disasters? No sir!
The NFL originally thought it could push the game back to Monday night, but after Ike damaged Reliant Stadium, the league scrambled this afternoon to make accommodations. It finally decided to play the game on what had been scheduled as the Ravens' bye week.
Because November 9 is not the Texans' bye week, more schedule juggling is needed. That means the Texans' home game against the Cincinnati Bengals, originally scheduled for November 9, will be moved to October 26, which was the bye week for both the Bengals and Texans.
The league, CBS, ESPN and DirecTV have huddled up and done the right thing for fans, and now everyone who has Sunday Ticket will have both the Ravens-Texans game and the previously scheduled ESPN Eagles-Cowboys game available to them on Monday night. Ravens-Texans was originally scheduled for Sunday afternoon on CBS but was pushed back 30 hours by Hurricane Ike.
"After taking a closer look at it, we have decided that our Sunday Ticket subscribers will receive Monday night's telecast of the Baltimore Ravens at Houston Texans game," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello told Pro Football Talk.
It appears that the key to the agreement was a concession made by ESPN, which usually has exclusive rights to NFL games on Monday nights. So kudos to the Worldwide Leader.
DirecTV is fond of telling customers that if they shell out $300 for NFL Sunday Ticket, they'll be able to see every NFL game. But, as Ravens and Texans fans are finding out this weekend, that's not true.
With Ravens-Texans moved to Monday night because of Hurricane Ike, fans of those teams who don't live in Baltimore or Houston are screwed: The game will only be shown on the CBS affiliates in the Baltimore and Houston areas, and will not be available to the rest of the country. If, say, you're a Ravens fan who lives in Nebraska and you bought NFL Sunday Ticket specifically because DirecTV told you you'd be able to see all 16 Ravens games, you're out of luck.
As Mike Florio notes at PFT, fans of the Ravens and Texans who bought Sunday Ticket because they wanted to see their teams should call DirecTV and demand a refund of one-sixteenth of the cost of Sunday Ticket. And they shouldn't hold their breath.
The Houston Texans just sent out a press release indicating that the Ravens-Texans match up will occur on Monday night instead of Sunday due to Hurricane Ike:
Due to the importance of allowing the Houston area to focus on its recovery from the expected arrival of Hurricane Ike on Friday, the Houston Texans' home game Sunday against the Baltimore Ravens has been re-scheduled for Monday night at Reliant Stadium at 7:30 p.m. Houston time (8:30 p.m. ET). The game originally was scheduled to be played on Sunday, September 14 at 3:15 p.m. Houston Time (4:15 p.m. ET).
The Texans-Ravens Monday night game will be televised on local CBS stations in the primary and secondary markets of the Texans (Houston, Beaumont-Port Arthur, and Bryan, Texas) and the Ravens (Baltimore; Washington, DC; Salisbury, MD; and Harrisburg, PA).
There is one simple rule that every chief executive in history, be it a student council president, the President of the United States, or the commissioner of baseball, needs to follow. You cannot make everyone happy. There are some decisions that need to be made that are not easy and will make some people upset. This is part of the job. Somehow, Bud Selig missed that part of training. After taking a ton of flak from Astros fans and players alike for moving two home games to Milwaukee in Hurricane Ike's wake, Bud apologized today in the Houston Chronicle. 
Since the Astros road trip to play Milwaukee in the wake of Hurricane Ike, they're 0-5. That puts them five games out of the wild card, which might as well be 100 games out at this late point in the season. They're upset with 
With Reliant Stadium losing five roof tiles in Hurricane Ike and the Texans not being completely sure when the roof will be ready for play, they've gotten an interesting offer for a temporary home - Minute Maid Park, crosstown home of the Astros. I don't know if there have been any serious discussions about this, but Astros' owner Drayton McLane told the Houston Chronicle today that 
After previously saying Monday night's 
UPDATE: Now 
The Houston Texans just sent out a press release indicating that the Ravens-Texans match up will occur on Monday night instead of Sunday due to Hurricane Ike:
