The Houston Oilers at Trinity
Calgaard did not seem interested in cultivating football fandom of any kind. For example, Paula Moore wrote a news article , in the San Antonio Business Journal on June 21, 1991 in which she explained that the Houston Oilers’ made a deal to hold their summer camp in San Antonio on Trinity’s campus. It turns out that President Calgaard was the “biggest fly in the ointment” in getting this deal done. Specifically, Calgaard did not see any publicity value in having the Oilers on campus, and did not like the idea of the Oilers tearing up his turf just to have Trinity donors foot the bill for the damages. Interestingly, however, Trinity was not paying the Oilers any money to come to their facilities. Instead, the Oilers were paying $400,000 to $500,000 for the opportunity to use Trinity’s campus (Moore, 1991). This is atypical for any professional football team, let alone the Oilers, who had made the playoffs in the previous year with players like Haywood Jeffries, Cris Dishman, Mike Munchak, and Warren Moon - all of whom were selected to the Pro Bowl and first team all pro.
So, for a school that was experiencing much apathy toward football, bringing a big name team to campus could have exposed students to football played at the highest level and garnered some interest in what our fighting Tigers were up to every Saturday afternoon. Although this Oiler's takeover would have occured over the summer while many students were away at home or abroad, I do not doubt that there were a fair amount of local students that would have found these practices enticing. Even if President Calgaard was simply not an Oilers fan, once they made their depart from Houston in 1996-97, Trinity University and President Calgaard refused to submit a bid that would have brought the Dallas Cowboys to Trinity’s campus on a similar deal. President Calgaard’s apparent apathy towards hosting football at its highest level on Trinity’s campus makes me question if bolstering his own university’s interest in the sport was at the top of his agenda.