Harvey’s impact
Hurricane Harvey has forced both the Houston Astros and Houston Texans to play home games miles away from the flood-stricken city. The Astros will begin a threegame series against the Texas Rangers in St. Petersburg, Fla., starting today, and the Texans will wrap up their exhibition schedule against the Dallas Cowboys in Arlington instead of NRG Stadium.
Hurricane Harvey has forced both the Houston Astros and Houston Texans to play home games miles away from the flood-stricken city, a big-time college football matchup has been moved to New Orleans and two Houston-based college teams are taking up residence in other parts of Texas.
The Astros will begin a threegame series against the Texas Rangers at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla., starting Tuesday, and the Texans will wrap up their preseason schedule against the Dallas Cowboys at AT&T Stadium in Arlington instead of NRG Stadium.
A college football game scheduled to be played at NRG Stadium, matching BYU and LSU, has been moved to the Superdome in New Orleans.
Rice’s football team is taking up residence at TCU’s campus in Fort Worth. The Owls opened the season over the weekend in Australia, where they lost to Stanford. They arrived in Dallas on Monday and were expected to share the campus with the Horned Frogs until things improve in Houston. The Owls have a week off before traveling to play UTEP on Sept. 9.
The University of Houston football team is in Austin, where former coach Tom Herman is preparing for his first season in charge of the Longhorns after two seasons at Houston.
Both the Astros and Rangers flew to Dallas after games in California on Sunday and traveled Monday to St. Petersburg, where the Astros will play at least three “home” games this season.
The team also said a threegame series against the New York Mets that begins on Friday may also be played at Tropicana Field.
If the Astros play both series in Florida, they will end up playing 19 consecutive games away from Houston, where the AL West leaders last played on Aug. 24. A 10-game road trip begins after the Mets series.
Rangers General Manager Jon Daniels said the team was open to hosting the series in Arlington this week, but had no interest in swapping a series against the Astros later in the season to accommodate the change. He said the Rangers declined partially because of thoughts for the fans, but also because that change would have left the Rangers with a 12-game road trip late in the season.