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Column: If only Houston still had a WNBA team …

Photo Credit: Todd Warshaw/Getty Images

If you were to check the headlines regarding sports in Houston, Texas nowadays, the coverage is not exactly as bright as the stars in the Texas night sky.

For those that do not know, the MLB’s Houston Astros have become embroiled in scandal where the team was alleged to have used intricate methods to steal signs from their opponents so they know what pitches they would receive. Among the allegations leveled against Houston’s baseball team is that it used methods of technology to get various 1-ups on opponents.

Needless to say, it has tainted the first-ever professional sports championship Houston had experienced since the 2000 Comets. The Astros won the 2017 World Series in what was a feel-good story for baseball at the time given the Houston area was ravaged by Hurricane Harvey that year. How bad as it … youth leagues in Southern California are banning the Astros name.

Oh … about those Comets.

Ahh … the days when a Houston team was on cloud nine and was not embroiled in a cheating scandal. Ahh … the days when Houston was at the top of the sporting conscience.

Let us remember that outside of the six championships won by the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s, most of professional basketball’s championships were won that decade by Houston teams. There were the four that the Comets won and the two that the Houston Rockets won from 1994-95.

Houston was Clutch City for sure.

Sheryl Swoopes. Tina Thompson. Cynthia Cooper. Houston sports have not experienced this level of consistent winning in local sports since those Comets teams. Not from the Astros, not from the Rockets, not from the Texans. The MLS’s Houston Dynamo won championships, but those were only back-to-back from 2006 to 2007.

The worst thing that happened to the Comets, obviously, is that the team folded (for some reason). And while the WNBA since has returned to the Lone Star State by virtue of the Dallas Wings, that team has mostly treaded water while the Comets were the W’s cream of the crop for many years.

Right now, the e-word is on the minds of WNBA brass, including commissioner Cathy Engelbert. But what we have heard mostly from those same W higher-ups is that it wants to stabilize the existing 12 franchises prior to expansion.

When the WNBA decides to expand (and it will eventually, we are sure), the significance of what the Comets accomplished as a springboard for later WNBA growth has to make Clutch City a strong candidate for expansion with the San Francisco Bay Area and Toronto.

The new Comets would have an in-state rival right there waiting for them in the Wings. Plus, Houston is one of the most diverse cities in the country with huge African-American, Hispanic and Asian populations. Warm weather, a robust job market and cost of living lower than the national average are three major catalysts behind Houston’s population exponentially growing.

Also – the possibility of Beyonce being one of the team’s biggest supporters. Yeah, THAT Queen Bey.

WNBA, we know you have plenty on your plate, but we all know that the blue light special that is expansion will simply be too tempting for your to pass up forever.

The new Comets would have a chance to be even more successful than the old Comets given the WNBA’s growth over the years and Houston’s growth over the years which creates a climate for the team to garner more support than it did in its heyday, not less.

And if Houston sports continue to go through this downtrend it has experienced with the Astros scandal over the ensuing number of years, a Comets return could be the mission the W should embark on to address Space City USA’s pro athletics … problem.

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