The nice thing about a blog is that any idiot can publish one. And what I’m gonna suggest here might testify to the validity of that statement.

See, I don’t really know what went down in San Jose. And I certainly don’t claim to know for a fact why AEG was so lackadaisical about keeping a team there. But I do have an idea that makes a great deal of sense to me.

In brief: San Jose was moved to Houston because, for perhaps the very first time, Major League Soccer’s interests and AEG’s interests were at odds.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Major League Soccer wants a team in San Jose. Northern California is a major market and any sports league that claims to be “major” should have a team there. Don Garber has made that clear again and again. He repeated it once more on Thursday when he announced a letter of intent to bring an MLS franchise back to San Jose if and when the city gets its stadium act together.

But, despite MLS’s interests, AEG didn’t get a stadium deal done. Indeed, they never actually seemed interested in getting it done. They paid lip service to the idea, but the will was never truly there. You need only compare AEG’s effort to secure the Harrison stadium with their “effort” to build a stadium in San Jose. The difference is plainly obvious.

My suspicion is that it was never in AEG’s interest to build a stadium in San Jose. It is, however, very much in AEG’s interest to build a stadium in Houston.

As I understand it, the top three media markets in the country are Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. AEG has built, or is going to build, stadiums in all three markets. Now they are going to build a stadium (that’s the plan, anyway) in Houston. Houston is a smaller market than San Jose (if you include the rest of the Bay Area in that measure). So why is Houston so much more attractive to AEG than San Jose? I don’t believe it’s as simple as they’ve got a better shot at building a stadium in Houston than in San Jose.

AEG already has a major venue in California – the Home Depot Center. Why would they want to build another soccer stadium 400 miles away that, in effect, would compete with the Home Depot Center for the title of the pre-eminent soccer venue on the West Coast?

Thinking beyond Major League Soccer, there are only a finite number of soccer events that take place every year. AEG wants those events, and they want them on their terms. So why wouldn’t AEG want to maintain the Home Depot Center in as non-competitive a market as possible? And if AEG themselves opened up a second venue in California they’d just be taking money from one hand to give it to the other. That’s not in AEG’s interest either.

AEG’s interest was always to put another team in Texas. A team needs a stadium, and a stadium in Texas would open up an entirely new market for AEG - a market that is complimentary to their existing markets. That’s what AEG wanted all along. And mark my words, even if they sell the team they’re bringing to Texas, they’ll never sell the stadium they plan to build there.

Sure, in Texas they’ll be competing against Lamar Hunt’s Pizza Hut Park. Those are the breaks. But at least they won’t be competing against themselves. And even with that competition, Houston remains (with Dallas) one of the two best soccer markets in the South. Indeed, it may even prove to be the best international soccer market in the South.

The rest of AEG’s stadiums won’t be facing much regional competition any time soon. Unless Philadelphia decides to build a new soccer stadium for an expansion team there won’t be much competition for Harrison, and it’s pretty clear that the Fire’s stadium will vastly outshine the bare bones Crew Stadium as the Midwest soccer venue of choice.

That’s four stadiums in four very large and distinct markets. None of those stadiums will directly compete with each other. Indeed, they compliment one another - West Coast, Midwest, Northeast, South - a perfect set of stadiums for, say, a ChampionsWorld Tour-style event.

Often Major League Soccer’s interests coincide with AEG’s interests. But perhaps in this instance they didn’t. Perhaps that’s why the San Jose Earthquakes suffered the fate they did.

Does that explanation make sense in some regards? Unfortunately, I think so. Does it make perfect sense? Perhaps not. For one thing, it strikes me as overly soccer-centric. I suspect in AEG’s world soccer is only one part of the calculation. But that’s the idea I keep coming back to whenever I ask why AEG prefers Houston to San Jose.

Idiotic, I know.