1. Introduction
Throughout professional football history, both the Chicago Bears and the Houston Texans have been titans in the sport. The Bears have bragging rights to the most Hall of Fame inductees of any other team, a testament to the respect and influence the team has received over the century it has existed. Inductees date back to the early days of American football, when the sport was technically placed at the collegiate level. The physicality, willingness to fight, and determination to earn a living as professional football players amplified the sport’s appeal not only for the excitement of sports but also for what it represented to American culture. The Bears have sustained the most victories of any other team and pride themselves on being one of only two teams in the NFL that have existed every season since the creation of the league itself. As a young man from Chicago walked into the grand opening of a Houston Texans store, Ben Smith exclaimed, “Of all the time-honored traditions at this store, none is quite as revered as the tradition of rooting against the Bears or any Chicago sports team.” Whether it is 1920 or 2020, the Bears are a team still rooted in American memory.
The Texans were created in 2002, but they come from a city steeped in its own history in professional football. The Dallas Texans of 1952 foreshadowed a period as the Baltimore Colts and fifteen years leading to the present day as the Indianapolis Colts explain all and more why anyone would have a serious stake in the Texans. Serving as the primary home for the professional Houston franchise since 1960, the city rose to two limited contenders. For three decades, the Houston Oilers gave the city hope by winning four championships. Since 2002, the Texans have walked through another franchise after the Oilers’ departure to receive that same passionate spirit. In order to assist with grounding this hot debate, the research objective of the current paper is twofold: 1) to measure and compare the performance of the Chicago Bears and the Houston Texans in the NFL; 2) to address the question of performance comparison through applicable qualitative data in history, impact on the teams, staffing, fans, and cities.
1.1. Background and Significance
The Chicago Bears entered into the history books in 1919. They have since accumulated a storied legacy, replete with 9 league championships and a perpetual presence in the NFL record books. An original team of the American Professional Football Association, from which the NFL emerged when the league underwent a renaming in 1922, the Bears of Chicago quickly became a professional football fixture in the Windy City. In comparison, the Houston Texans are one of the latest additions to the NFL, arriving in Houston in 2002. Formed as the NFL’s 32nd team, the Texans were created to replace the Houston Oilers, who left the area for Tennessee to become the Titans after the 1996 NFL season. Learned commentators would argue that the Bears are 33 years older than the Texans, and those commentators would be correct. The significance of the Bears and the Texans is an exercise in history. Both programs mirror the development of the United States and the development of sports within the nation. The Bears were established after World War I, at a time when immigration to America was at an all-time high. The Texans came of age at a time when the political climate of America was undergoing a significant transformation and corporations were shuffling their resources, both human and financial, to capitalize on this new, untapped energy market. Simply for the record, the Oilers predated the founding of the American Football League in 1960. The team was a member of the old American Football League, which began in 1926.
1.2. Purpose and Scope
A Comparative Analysis: Bears and Texans in a Nutshell—This paper aims to compare two NFL franchises, the Chicago Bears and the Houston Texans. It will do so by evaluating and comparing records and culture, fan engagement and local significance, while also establishing some greater historical and social context about the respective NFL teams. There is a rich body of literature connecting a city’s sports programs to a city’s culture, as it often functions as a source of unity, self-expression, pride, and ritual. A city’s teams often share some of their region’s main socioeconomic, political, and geo-cultural values with their fans. Therefore, this essay looks at the Bears and Texans from six different yet interconnected perspectives, or six layers.
The team’s overall record or win-loss percentage; long-term historical performance; culture, team mystique, tradition or organizational values; fan engagement and local significance at home; extant coverage by local media; current theses, contentions, or soundbites from recent local and not-so-local publications. This analysis of the teams through a litany of metrics is reflective of the NFL, which is often viewed as a carousel of fates. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of the time we wish to maintain some sense of time and place within this comparison for its ultimate usefulness; therefore, these comparatives ultimately skew toward the most discernible and comparable data available to us, the teams’ full, final, historical records. This report also uses all win-loss percentages as VIII.X or eight-point-x and not as just the first three decimal places of a number.
2. Chapter 1: Historical Context
In September 1920, the Decatur Staleys took the field for the first time, becoming one of 14 teams in the inaugural season of the American Professional Football Association. Five years later, the organization relocated to Chicago and became the Chicago Bears. Named for their historical significance in their home city, the Bears built a championship tradition. Since the turn of the 20th century, football has been a booming industry. The United States has led the development of professional sports teams and leagues. Time, however, has not been enough on its own to transform the league to the heights it enjoys now. Future success demanded the blossoming of talent across increasingly diverse communities and a persistently growing fan base.
The 2002 NFL season marked the beginning of an exciting new era in professional football. As part of a collective shift in both promotional and structural strategies, the NFL realigned into two conferences and eight divisions, and the Houston Texans took the field for the first time. In his statement announcing the realignment, NFL Commissioner predicted that it would produce greater competition and better direction and form for his league. By comparison, the Chicago Bears faced no such challenge in appropriating ownership of a particular NFL narrative. Commonly recognized as one of the oldest and most fascinating organizations in the National Football League, the Bears captured nine rival championships prior to the inception of the Super Bowl and one additional crown subsequently. At the start of the 2002 season, they were also the NFL’s only major professional sports franchise that could boast exclusive use of a stadium titled after one of their own. In all, over the course of eighty-three seasons and more than a dozen partnerships with local landmarks and businesses, the Bears have constructed a singularly evocative narrative.
2.1. Establishment and Early Years of the Chicago Bears
The Chicago Bears have origins tracing back to the late 1910s, originally established in Decatur, Illinois, in 1919. Only three years after the franchise’s founding, the team found itself struggling on the field, only able to win three of their twenty games from 1922 to 1923. Also in 1921, George Halas was selected as the head football coach for the Decatur Staleys, and he relocated the team to Chicago in 1921, rebranding them as the Chicago Staleys and finally the Chicago Bears. Over the span of their first decade, the Bears gradually transformed into a powerhouse professional football franchise, characterized by a hard-nosed running back and stout defenses.
A strong work ethic fueled by blue-collar grinders was the core of the Bears team during their formative years. This mirrored the composite qualities of a Chicagoan and became enshrined as the Bears culture. A collaboration with NFL co-founder Ralph Hay led to a title victory for the Bears in 1921 against the Buffalo All-Americans, with Chicago securing another title in the 1932 NFL Championship Game against the Portsmouth Spartans. Only one day after their triumph in 1932, the New York Giants emerged as a new competitor for a title. The 1933 NFL Championship Game marked the formation of an intense inter-market rivalry, with the Bears falling in a grueling 23-21 outing. During their early days, the Bears were renowned for their superb work during the first half, leading in a combined 17 games. The team led in an impressive 83% of their December engagements, foreshadowing their future success in the modern era. Over the course of the NFL’s formative years, a total of 46 NFL teams, spanning 11 markets, have either disestablished or relocated, but the Bears have endured in their charter city since 1922.
2.2. Establishment and Early Years of the Houston Texans
The Houston Texans are the name and concept of the most recent addition to the NFL when considering the team’s history, having begun play in 2002. Any modern league must eventually expand, and the owners of the 32 existing teams voted to allow the Houston Texans to become the 32nd NFL franchise in 1999. Despite the existing history of the league that the Texans were able to build upon, the team was widely supported upon their arrival in Houston and set the record for the sale of personal seat licenses of a new franchise. The Houston Texans started strong, and while they stumbled competitively after a few seasons, the concept behind the team has remained strong. As of the 2021 season, the team has won four division titles and made six playoff appearances. The team’s identity, the structure they have built, and the style of football they have played is not only inarguably legitimate but has also been perfect for a city that has seen trumpeting a specific style of football as one of its inalienable rights. This is in part due to the various connections the team has cultivated within the football culture that has existed in the state of Texas for generations, and due to people who took essential or early roles in determining the direction of the team inside and out. Certain people have helped build or rebuild a football team from its basest foundational levels upwards, and their contributions can be considered essential. These people take one of the roles already identified, such as a founding owner or early player, and gradually expand the frame by introducing multiple other figures and events that have impacted the direction of the franchise. With regard to this founding figure, one can discuss a significant individual in the history of a professional sports franchise. Focusing on an expansion team, their personal history is an essential topic in addition to actions taken in striking out as new entities in a large, vacant market. By establishing a clear identity in competition and local outreach, the Houston Texans were successful almost immediately. Much of that was owed to the ownership of Bob McNair, an energy producer and member of a wealthy family.
3. Chapter 2: Team Performance Metrics
This chapter shifts the primary focus of the paper from examining individual quarterbacks to quantifying team performance metrics in an effort to analyze which team has been more successful throughout their history. It begins with a look at win-loss percentages in the history of the NFL, showing where the Chicago Bears and Houston Texans fall in a historical context. From there, the chapter delves into how each team has fared in comparison to the rest of the league, showing the percentage of seasons in which each organization has finished better than the average NFL team. This information helps to pinpoint which seasons have been particularly successful for each team, as well as when in a franchise’s history they completed a turning point and began to fare worse than an average team. In addition to overall performance, the chapter also provides information about playoff successes, tallying the number of playoff appearances the Chicago Bears and Houston Texans have made, as well as the number of playoff victories. Playoff appearances and playoff victories both contribute toward the narrative of which teams have been more successful in the history of the NFL, but in different ways. Playoff victories indicate actual lasting playoff success, a stronger metric for competitive legacy. Playoff appearances, on the other hand, are more reflective of a team’s immediate perception, demonstrating a mixture of lasting success from the past and competitiveness in the present.
3.1. Win-Loss Records
This section provides a quantitative overview of how both teams have performed with regard to wins and losses. By several metrics, the Chicago Bears have been successful on the field. They are one of the original teams from the first season of the National Football League and hence have longer spans of win-loss records compared to other teams. Thus, the Bears’ season-by-season records can mean varying degrees of success as well as pessimism and enthusiasm for loyal fans. The more recent Houston Texans are the 32nd franchise to join the NFL, the youngest of the 32 teams and one of the few teams in the western United States. The Texans started out as an expansion team in the 2002 season and have played relatively fewer games compared to the Bears, so they possess few winning season records and rivalry games. The Texans have had a tough time recently in part due to personnel moves that saw teams draft players who went on to Pro Bowl rosters and Super Bowls.
The regular season games played by the teams lead to different perceptions of competitive success. A season with a winning record typically results in fan optimism and a playoff berth. A losing season typically results in the firing of the GM, head coach, or multiple coordinators, displaying disillusionment of recent events. The teams have different approaches to games, and due to their win-loss percentages, they differ in public perception. The Bears have won close games with defense and the running game traditionally, while the Texans have often won using the west coast offense. The teams have had winning and losing streaks in their history, which have affected their overall win-loss records. False hope, coined for two losing seasons in a row after a winning season, causes fans to leap off the bandwagon just to hop back on another year. The narrative of a mainly successful season is interpreted by these team performances. Key seasons for both teams are also listed. The above analysis shows the quantifiable part of a sport and the importance of statistics when evaluating team performance.
3.2. Playoff Appearances and Success
One clear way to compare the historical successes of professional sports teams and organizations is by examining their playoff appearances and success. The Chicago Bears have made the postseason 27 times, the third most in National Football League history; of course, the team’s nearly century-long history plays a role in that impressive total. On the other hand, a franchise as young as the Houston Texans has only qualified for the playoffs 7 times. The Bears’ playoff appearances, then, precede the Texans’ first season overall. Over the course of time, playoff appearances add up. The significance of postseason appearance data—those numbers and the seasons and games behind the numbers—is not limited to number comparisons, however. The narrative behind career numbers and snapshots also bears heavy and important insights.
It is hereby proposed, then, that the significance of playoff appearance data is reflected in the everyday lives of sports fans and is important on several levels. When a team landmark or record is impending or under consideration, fans recall and are reminded of the greatest moments and players not explicitly quantified by the given statistic. Even regular season wins, losses, games, and trends are often measured in major successes, highlighted by postseason wins and emotional responses to playoff disappointments and heartbreaks. Coaches, teams, and organizations may not project or expect a playoff berth from a given squad; however, they work and construct their teams, schemes, and styles with the ultimate goal of playoff success in mind. A playoff victory is a high watermark; conversely, an early playoff exit can shape new goals for the following season. The organizations and their fans acknowledge and build their story, their lexicon, from these markers and events.
4. Chapter 3: Player and Coaching Legends
In terms of player legends, no player is bigger than Walter Payton for the Chicago Bears. In fact, Payton is almost a synonym for the franchise itself, as evidenced by the statue of him outside Soldier Field and his presence in countless documentaries around the team. Other Bear legends include Dick Butkus, Gale Sayers, and Bronko Nagurski. In the Super Bowl formative years of 1985, the head coach of the team was Mike Ditka, who quickly became a larger-than-life figure. Ditka brought Payton’s heart and determination and moved to become the face of the team itself. Indeed, Ditka’s career is so revered by fans that even today when one passes by Soldier Field, the oft-restricted sight of Ditka’s #89 jersey is just across from Payton’s. This sentiment does not erase the certain truth of Payton’s greatness, but rather largely and controversially celebrates the irreplaceably gritty on-field culture and attitude of Coach Mike Ditka.
While no one has reached the “legend” status of a Walter Payton or a “Mike Ditka” for the Houston Texans, defensive end J.J. Watt is very much on this trajectory. The three-time Defensive Player of the Year is as beloved by fans of his era and has 101.0 sacks in his ten years with the franchise despite repeated injury and adversity. If a player with 110 total tackles and 16.0 sacks in 13 games played in 2021 has a good season, it will make history immortal as the Houston Texans all-time record for sacks in a career, as no one has ever surpassed 100.5 as a Houston Texan. Watt retained this lucrative first place as a Texan. In terms of coaching legends, the Chicago Bears had former coach George Halas, namesake of the home stadium, who also played for the team for a year in 1921. After Ditka, no subsequent Bears head coach in the Super Bowl era has even been close to the level of “legend” with the team from a cultural perspective. That being said, legendary head coaches are everywhere in NFL history, and the Houston Texans have Bill O’Brien, who had a good 52-48 record as head coach from 2014 to 2020.
4.1. Chicago Bears Legends
The Chicago Bears, like the Houston Texans, have a deep and storied history. Several of their players and coaches are synonymous not only with the Bears but also with the entire NFL. Walter Payton, who is most commonly referred to as “Sweetness,” is undoubtedly the first and most enduring of these characters. Payton, a player and not a coach, left a lasting impact on the franchise with his incredible play, attitude, and work ethic. At the time of his retirement, Payton held the record for most yardage gained cumulatively in the history of the league. Even with his entering the league in 1975, the record was particularly impressive, as this was an NFL that established the 16-game season just a year prior. Another of the all-time Bears legends is also entwined with Payton: coach Mike Ditka.
A legendary tight end in his own right, Ditka distinguished himself as a player with the Chicago Bears and was elected to the Hall of Fame as a player. But it was as a coach that he made his name with the franchise. Ditka led his team to a 15-1 regular season in 1985, which would ultimately culminate in their Super Bowl triumph, the sole appearance of either of these two teams at the biggest game in American football. They beat the New England Patriots in that game, with leading characters Hall of Famers Mike Singletary, William “Refrigerator” Perry, and “Iron” Mike Ditka, along with the legend of all legends, Walter Payton. These players and their accomplishments, along with the Super Bowl in particular, are still celebrated by Bears fans today. Moreover, they have contributed significantly to shaping the franchise’s image. Even today, franchises such as Chicago or Green Bay do not adorn their stadium or field with the last name of their franchise’s owner or another societal figure. Instead, they use the names of these legends who helped make their team special. In the case of the Bears, they have “Payton Drive,” located on the north side of the stadium, as a tribute to one of the all-time greats. Legends, as such, are a useful way to connect fans of today’s game to those of a bygone era. They also contribute heavily to fans’ perception of success in a given franchise. This is especially true for the Bears, as they are not consistently successful and, therefore, have a somewhat checkered championship past.
4.2. Houston Texans Legends
As one of the youngest teams in the NFL, the Houston Texans understandably have not cultivated the rich history of NFL legends the way a team like the Chicago Bears has. In the limited time the franchise has existed, however, several distinguishing figures have emerged. Though his career in Houston is now over, J.J. Watt is the current embodiment of Texans history and everything the franchise hopes it can be in the future. This is fitting: Watt was the figurehead of the team when they established themselves as an NFL force before battling several years of injury struggles. The same goes for Andre Johnson, whom many consider the “original Texan” for his sterling career in Houston before departing to play briefly for another team. Johnson was a model of dedication in Houston until the struggling season boiled over and led him to voice his dissatisfaction.
Legends in any capacity are special, but individual accolades do not often contribute directly to the success of the franchise. The merits of professional sports depend on victories. That said, legends establish a team’s identity through actions in difficult times. Heroes inspire hope and aspiration, no matter the player’s current performance. These kinds of figures also bring credibility and attention to the franchise; their performances become must-see TV. There is likely a good deal of crossover between cities—Houston sports fans likely celebrate various players with the same joy they reserve for Watt and Johnson. But legends also crystallize here, inside the city itself. They can be active members of the community or be selective when it comes to the interviews they give. They are simultaneously larger than life and seem reasonably approachable. We build up our legends to be everything they can possibly be. As Texans fans, that figures to hold true especially since the longevity of those legends might not yet be fully realized. Coaching legends are few and far between, just as true players of that caliber are few and far between. That could change with enough time and energy.
5. Chapter 4: Franchise Values and Revenue
Franchise values and revenue are important pieces of information to understand when looking at different levels of sport. They can give some insight into the performance of a team before looking into the specifics of performance. For a team to perform, it must be able to operate. One of the main factors in a team’s operations is the value of the franchise and the income that they bring in. The value of the 32 franchises from a predicting model at the start of the 2020 season also contains the total revenue that the team made in 2019. There are some assumptions that can be made by the comparisons of the two different figures. For example, the Chicago Bears are the 7th most valuable team with a franchise value of $3.525 billion. The Bears were also 8th in the NFL in 2019, bringing in a total of $432 million in revenue. This figure is somewhere near the limit of what a franchise value would be if following typical operating systems of a firm. Therefore, the value of the Chicago Bears represents the typical operation of a team. On the other hand, the Houston Texans are the newest team in the NFL, being established in 2002. This allows a look at how being one of the newest franchises can either positively or negatively affect the value of a team. The Texans are coming in at #7 when compared as the poorest, having a franchise value of $3.05 billion. This represents the bottom 5 of franchise values in the league. However, the team is in the top 15 in revenue, bringing in $444 million. Evaluated by these metrics, you can tell that they are a less valuable team compared to the rest of the league. Currently, the NFL is seeing television rights deals that total over $100 billion for a decade of rights. These types of numbers allow a team to build themselves the flexibility to have enough slack on an operating budget, which increases their win-now intentions. In 2020, the NFL averaged a 0.1446 revenue-to-value ratio. This is not as well known, so the league is still functioning as a profit-maximizing organization. Over time, the league has been able to continuously increase operations as operating income. One of the biggest items of the operations that seems to be growing among the leagues is the steady ticket revenue. However, after the 2019 season, this has changed aggressively. As the data suggests, ticket sales are only a portion of the total NFL revenue. Since 2000, every team is receiving at least that amount from sponsorship and media. Including those sources, the overall team is over 75% both in 2000 and in 2019. In 2019, the Bears are receiving just under 78% from those two sources, deviating from the average of just under 82% in the NFL. The finances of a franchise are a big proponent off the field. It signals to the organization how the team should be managed. All four teams in a championship game this last NFL season were involved in the 10 most valuable franchises in the league, with the Bills and Bucs breaking the top 10. Placing a team with a large franchise value may lead itself to create a team that focuses on wins. A large part of the NFL management philosophy is sustained success. If the build of the franchise is financially situated in a manner that suggests the priority of winning, in the long term, it could create more of a sustainable environment; however, the data to support this was not found.
6. Chapter 5: Fan Base and Community Engagement
Fan Base and Community Engagement Community initiatives are a great way for NFL franchises to connect with their local markets. As the eyes of fans across the nation are on the field on game days, a fair number of fans in the stands every week may not follow every game live or travel to their team’s city, but they are our walking advertisements. The fan base is unique and significant to the identity of a team. The Chicago Bears have been around for just over one hundred years, and their fan base is historically supportive and loyal. Fans who have been attending games for decades invoke this history and tradition. The Bears harness the passion of their fans with a passionate theme of “Bear Down.” In contrast, the Houston Texans are a relatively new franchise with a younger, less established fan base. The Texans are an homage to the state of Texas and therefore represent a shared identity with all Texans. Houston has a local following earned from years with a consistent, solid team that lives, as their catchphrase suggests, “Deep Steel Blue.” At the same time, though, the Texans are working to build upon corporate allocations in their city. Community links and a fan-building culture have earned the Texans a public relations spot as “The Compassionate” franchise. They manage Touchdown Tours designed to show off the team to kids in Houston area schools, connect players to Texans fans on their website, and offer fan mobile apps, as well as weekly and daily e-letters, to entertain and inform the fan base. In addition, they use social media to connect and offer fans special deals and engagement opportunities. Positioning an NFL evidence of fan base and community ties adds flavor.
7. Chapter 6: Conclusion and Future Prospects
I conclude this comparative study of the Houston Texans and the Chicago Bears with brief reflections on some of the attachments that individuals hold to these “usable pasts” and speculate on the performance of these two teams during the National Football League’s Centennial Season. The historical trajectories of the Titans and Bears have largely defined what it means to play in both those spaces for different fans, media, and pundits. The Texans, as a recent expansion team, are limited in the legend that can be used to draw fans into the space, a true indicator of financial health, but can highlight success stories, individual players, and different eras of play moving into the 2020s. Additionally, with Deshaun Watson at the helm, the faces of the two franchises are clearer.
Regarding future research, there are many additional interesting questions to consider. These include: a comparative study of the 1920 Decatur Staleys and contemporary Chicago Bears, and the 1960 AFL Houston Oilers and the contemporary Tennessee Titans; a historical comparison of the role the Titans and Bears play in their cities; and an inquiry into how event spaces are developing in the twenty-first century. Future work should also continue to monitor the performance of the two teams. According to past performance, the Chicago Bears should outscore opponents by 10.78 points per game and hold a 55.67% winning percentage, and reach the playoffs seven times in the next 20 seasons. In contrast, the Houston Texans should score 3.24 fewer points per game than their opponents and win 43.31% of the time. With such a close ratio of really good to really bad games played in the previous twenty seasons, these predictions all seem daunting.