There is still something unseemly about a city that throws itself and its money at a professional sports franchise–and this town never will be mistaken for a blushing bride. But give the good people of Nashville this: Lust has worked for them.
The sheer weight of the Tennessee Titans’ history tips the scales at about an ounce, yet they are playing in the Super Bowl on Sunday against the St. Louis Rams. Talk about pride. Chests are swelling, and Dolly Parton is said to be on the verge of envy and another surgical procedure.
The Titans have been in Tennessee for three seasons, in Nashville for two and in their own stadium for one. This city hardly had to lift a finger to achieve what some sad-sack, smokestacked Northern cities have pursued doggedly for 30 years. Nashville got a job in the mailroom one week and was sipping cognac in the CEO’s chair the next.
“You’re in a Southern community. Tradition is what we’re all about,” said Melinda Harshbarger, director of member relations for the Nashville Chamber of Commerce. “This community embraces tradition.”
But that’s just it: Nashville doesn’t have any pro football tradition. Tradition means reminiscing about Training Camp ’98.
This city is not the least bit self-conscious about stumbling into the lap of NFL luxury. It is not even a touch embarrassed. Then again, this is the town that gave us song lyrics such as “I don’t know whether to kill myself or go bowling” and “My wife left me so I beat up the pig.”
“We thank Houston for sending the team this way,” local minister John Gassaway said with a laugh.
Titans owner Bud Adams thanks Nashville for its tax dollars.
Four years ago the Houston Oilers were like one of Minnie Pearl’s hats, price tag dangling. Nashville took Adams’ call, understood his needs completely and put out money, the promise of a new stadium, lots of revenue streams and cheap rent. The Oilers agreed to move to Music City.
They played in Memphis in 1997 and in Vanderbilt Stadium in 1998 before moving into brand-new Adelphia Coliseum this season as the Titans. The 67,700-seat stadium cost $292 million, with $221 million of it mostly funded by government bonds and taxes, and the rest paid for by fans through personal seat licenses.
Now Nashville has a Hard Rock Cafe, a Planet Hollywood restaurant and an NFL franchise. There used to be an Opryland Amusement Park, but it’s being replaced by a huge shopping mall. Life is moving forward quickly, and tradition is being created on the run. This is America at its best and at its worst.
In the meantime, Nashville has lost its mind over the Titans. A local radio station announced last week it had hidden free Super Bowl tickets on a Nashville police officer as part of a promotion, leading normally well-behaved citizens to pat down some of the city’s finest. It probably would have been a good idea if all of the officers had been told about the contest. Many had no idea why they were being pursued by unhinged fans in Titans jerseys.
“We all know Titanmania is crazy, but to think people would pull officers over on the interstate is just incredible to me,” said Cindy Francis, the station’s marketing director.
As the Titans have advanced through the playoffs, each week’s game has become the most-watched sporting event in the history of Nashville television, even surpassing the 1999 Fiesta Bowl, in which the University of Tennessee beat Florida State for the national championship. The ABC affiliate expects an 80 share for Sunday’s game.
“We run [coach] Jeff Fisher’s show on Monday nights,” said Matthew Zelkind, the news director for WKRN-TV. “It’s selling like crazy. We’re running a 25-minute special following our late news and people are fighting to get commercial time. It is phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal.”
Vanderbilt’s basketball team is off to its best start in almost two decades and it gets buried like Jimmy Hoffa inside the local sports section. Attendance is down about 1,900 a game from a year ago, although that could have something to do with a weak non-conference schedule. Or maybe not.
“I feel like that old painting where the Indians are up on a snow-covered perch and down in the valley you see train tracks being cut across through the hunting ground,” one school official said. “You feel like you’re an endangered species.”
What is at work, of course, is the psychology of being associated with a winner. And perhaps more so in Nashville, which sits in the heart of the state but 178 miles west of Tennessee’s soul, Knoxville. Knoxville has the University of Tennessee, which has a football team that regularly attracts crowds of 107,000 to its home games.
Nashville football fans traditionally have felt certain resentment toward eastern Tennessee, as if they knew they were involved in the Volunteers’ success but were not full partners in it. The Titans are different. The Titans are theirs. They own the Titans–well, at least emotionally.
“There never really has been a big sports identity for middle Tennessee,” said Gary Jensen, a sociology professor at Vanderbilt. “So the Titans have filled that void. People wanted a team they really could rally behind. Of course it’s a winner, and that makes a big difference as well.”
The Titans have done more than give Nashvillians something of their own to cheer for these days. Jensen said the team has managed to do what no social program has been able to: bring blacks and whites together. A game at Adelphia Coliseum might be the most integrated event in the city.
Gassaway, the black pastor of McNairy Hill United Primitive Baptist Church, agreed.
“This team has made us more neighborly again,” he said. “We used to be a city that was wide open. A lot of love existed. But there had been a division between blacks and whites since the ’60s, even though we tried to mingle with one another. There was still that stigma in our community that separated us. Now we’ve come together again.”
The city also is trying to alter perceptions that this is Hooterville. The country music industry and the Christian music industry are still huge. The Grand Ole Opry still draws a crowd. But the sound of jackhammers and construction equipment is music to many people’s ears. Computer giant Dell moved part of its operation to town, creating 2,500 new jobs. The city also has an NHL franchise, the Predators.
“There’s a lot more here than country music,” said Bonnie Boone, owner of a local bridal shop. “The Titans’ success is drawing attention to the city. Being a native, I like that. We’re not all country hicks just because we have a funny accent.”
Boone, by the way, said her husband’s great-great-great-great-grandfather was Daniel Boone’s brother.
She and her workers wore Titans jerseys at work last week. So did the mannequins in the store window. Boone spent about $600 buying jerseys for her employees (human and otherwise) because she thought it a nice way to show support for the team.
“We’re very fortunate to have this fall in our lap at the time it did,” she said. “The team was ready. In Houston they had the talent. They needed support. When they came here, they catapulted.”
The Chamber of Commerce’s Harshbarger said: “Every time we see the Titans on TV, all of us still pinch each other and go, `We’re not Chicago, we’re not New York, we’re not L.A., but we are in the same game.’ We still can’t believe we’re really there.”
She and her friends might be in the minority. There is a sense of unreality, as if no one completely understands how lucky they are, as if few people understand that Super Bowl appearances are not supposed to happen this quickly. Many fans seem to believe that because a new stadium went up and because Adams broke down and changed the team name from Oilers to Titans, this is a new franchise.
The fumes from all the new paint must be affecting their thinking. This franchise did not just rise up out of nowhere, even if Ed McMahon did show up on the city’s doorstep one day.
“People here don’t see it as the Oilers moved here,” Jensen said. “They renamed the team the Titans. They built the new stadium. The team has fundamentally changed. The typical person here doesn’t see this as the Oilers at all.”
It seems only fair, however, that Nashville got what Houston once had. Sam Houston once studied law in Nashville and went on to become a two-term U.S. congressman and the governor of Tennessee in the 1820s. But when his marriage ended in divorce, he quietly left Nashville and joined the Cherokees. In 1833 he went to Texas and eventually became president of the Texas Republic and then a U.S. senator. The city of Houston is named for him. As he lay dying of pneumonia, he murmured, “Texas, Texas,” with his last breath.
The traitor.
Nashville is chanting back at him, “Titans, Titans.”
