My fair city has gotten itself a new minor league basketball team.
It isn’t hard for me to restrain myself from great jubilation over the news. First of all, basketball just doesn’t do it for me and by “it” I mean anything. It was fun to play pickup games until I broke my pinkie during the first week of fire academy. I sort of had a vague interest when the Rockets made the NBA championships during the OJ Days. And women’s college basketball can be semi-entertaining to me. But needless to say, if pro basketball doesn’t thrill me the American Basketball Association just doesn’t have a chance with me.
The problem is that our county built this big entertainment complex out on Interstate 10 some years back with an arena and outside amphitheater — just the thing in our subtropical Augusts with 90-plus heat and similar numbers for humidity. And since that time they have been trying to get people to come to it. You know, build it and they will …
First they obtained a minor league hockey team. That was even more out of place in Beaumont, Texas, than minor league basketball. But minor league hockey has flourished in some small markets where the owners aggressively pursued a fan base. But the Texas Wildcatters didn’t make it. As for the semi-pro arena football team, the Drillers (get the oilfield connection), I don’t know how successful they’ve been. I kind of like the idea of arena-style football. It features a lot of passing like 6-man football but I don’t like the idea of that kind of football being indoors.
So we have the Southeast Texas Mustangs as our new minor league team. Here in the land of Friday Night Lights where high school ball is king and in a year or two from now the local Lamar University Cardinals will once again play collegiate ball. All I got to say to the Mustangs is lotsa luck!