Thanksgiving in January

Maybe you haven't thought about it lately, but you should be on your knees thanking the Flying Spaghetti Monster (or your deity of choice) that you are a fan of Houston's team.

1) You could be a Rams/Jaguars/Chargers/Buccaneers fan, facing the very real possibility that your franchise will depart in a couple of years, leaving you permanently without a home team. If J'ville loses the Jaguars or St. Louis loses its SECOND team, do you think the NFL will ever come back? No way in hell. If you lose the team you have now in those cities, you are most likely a permanent pro football orphan.

2) Your team could be owned by an idiot. Cf. Jerry Jones, Daniel Snyder, Mikey Brown, Jim Irsay, Stephen Ross, Mark Davis. No doubt you could name a couple more.

3) Your city could simply be a piss-poor pro football town (choose any in Florida). Failure is probably inevitable in some locations.

Now for the positives:

1) Houston is an NFL gold mine: it is huge and football-crazy. As long as there is an NFL, Houston will have a team. Even Beelzebud couldn't permanently screw this up.

2) Your team is managed for long-term success. The owner models his franchise on the league's perpetually successful organizations: Pittsburgh; New England; NYG. There may be failed engineers, but the train will stay on the tracks.

3) #2 is paying off. The head coach and general manager have been given time to learn their jobs and produce. The 2011/2012 roster and the success it achieved are tangible evidence.

4) All of a sudden, your team is loaded. LO-DED. AJ, Schaub, OD, Myers, Brown , J Jo, Danieal, Killawatt, Reed, Ninja, Capt. Crush and more. Most talented roster in the AFC? I'd say so.

So, as you reflect on the season just completed and the season to come, pause to savor how lucky you are. Go ahead: survey the rest of the league and indulge yourself in a bit of smug satisfaction. You're a Texans fan.