MAROON said:

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Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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I miss being able to drive into the parking lot of the dome and walk directly in the stadium.

You get there a couple hours early, you could park first row directly in front of the Astrodome and walk right in.

It was a different experience.

You'd walk into the dome and it was like walking around in a dark bowling alley. It was really dark in the concourse of the dome.

It had a futuristic glow. Like you were inside a spaceship.

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really good description of the Dome.

One thing the Texans have done that is light years ahead of the Oilers was to encourage tail gating. Traffic to get to Texans games is a breeze (even in the years when they sold out). Oilers traffic was the worst of possibly any stadium in the country because most tried to arrive just before kickoff and everyone left as soon as the game was over because no one was tailgating.

We would arrive way early with both the Post ad the Chronicle and sit in our seats for two hours and read the Sunday papers. and rink a nice dome foam for pre-game,

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Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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I remember reading articles in the Post/chron as a kid about a controversy about beer sales at the dome and people getting too rowdy.

Seems like they implemented a policy to cut off beer sales at a certain point in the game to try and prevent chaos.

Seems lime there was some sort of specific incident that caused it but don't remember the details.

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spadilly said:

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Academy has had a decent selection of Houston Oilers shirts and hats lately. Probably sells better than Texans gear these days.

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scd88 said:

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Stagger Lee, baby. Glanville was the guy who left a will call ticket for Elvis for every game.

Good times back then; lots of personalities. The Dome was a piece of shlt for football (and in general after the scoreboard was taken down and seats added) but it was our piece of shlt.

Houston, in general, was great back then.

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AgCPA95 said:

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cajunaggie08 said:

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The blackouts were an NFL rule at the time which stated you needed to sell 85% of your stadium's seating in order for the game to be broadcasted. Obviously it was a rule from an era where more money was made from ticket sales than tv rights. Bud could have "bought" the remaining seats or tarped off seating to change the official capacity but he didnt care. He wanted to show the NFL that Houston didn't support his team and needed to move.

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Correct. IIRC it also to be by something like Thursday at noon or the blackout stood which I guess was a leftover rule from when some games were just not televised even for the road team. Randall's and Gallery Furniture seems to be the most common good Samaritans who would buy up the remaining inventory or at least enough to hit the threshold by the deadline and would then give them away.

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03_Aggie said:

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AgCPA95 said:

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cajunaggie08 said:

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The blackouts were an NFL rule at the time which stated you needed to sell 85% of your stadium's seating in order for the game to be broadcasted. Obviously it was a rule from an era where more money was made from ticket sales than tv rights. Bud could have "bought" the remaining seats or tarped off seating to change the official capacity but he didnt care. He wanted to show the NFL that Houston didn't support his team and needed to move.

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Correct. IIRC it also to be by something like Thursday at noon or the blackout stood which I guess was a leftover rule from when some games were just not televised even for the road team. Randall's and Gallery Furniture seems to be the most common good Samaritans who would buy up the remaining inventory or at least enough to hit the threshold by the deadline and would then give them away.

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I don't recall it being a complete blackout. Just a blackout within a certain distance of the city. It was an effort to get butts in the seats as opposed to sitting at home and watching on tv.

I remember watching them out at our property (100 miles from Houston) while they were blacked out in town.

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