Houston Texans

The Houston Texans are a professional American football team based in Houston, Texas. They are currently members of the Southern Division of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL). The Texans joined the NFL as a 2002 expansion team. more...

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The city's previous franchise, the Houston Oilers, moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 1997, changing their name to the Tennessee Titans in 1999.

Franchise history

AFL/NFL in Houston: 1960 – 1996

Professional Football in Houston dates back to 1960 when oilman Bud Adams founded the Houston Oilers, a charter member of the American Football League. The Oilers appeared in the first three AFL championships, winning the first two before falling in double overtime to the Dallas Texans in 1962. The Oilers became the first professional football team to play in a domed stadium, when they moved into Houston's Astrodome for the 1968 season. The Oilers had success in the late 70’s (known as the Luv Ya Blue era) with running back Earl Campbell and head coach Bum Phillips. They would advance to the AFC Championship game in 1978 and 1979, but lost to the eventual Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers both times. They would find success again in the late 80’s and early 90’s with quarterback Warren Moon, making the playoffs seven consecutive seasons, yet never advancing past the second round. A string of playoff futility that included infamously coughing up a 32-point second half lead to the Buffalo Bills in 1992. The Oilers drafted Steve McNair in 1995 and Eddie George in 1996, but fans in Houston were forced to watch them play most of their careers in another city.

Adams alienated many fans in Houston with his questionable decisions, including firing the extremely popular Bum Phillips and threatening in 1987 to move the team to Jacksonville, Florida if improvements were not made to the Astrodome. The city agreed to pay $67 million in renovations which included the removal of the iconic center field scoreboard. When the city refused to help finance a new stadium just a few years later, he moved the franchise to Tennessee for the 1997 season. After playing two seasons as the Tennessee Oilers, they were renamed the Tennessee Titans in 1999. The city of Houston is still paying back the debt from the renovations they made to the Astrodome in 1987.

The birth of the Texans: 1997-2001

In the first part of 1997, football was on the back burner of Bob McNair's mind, as he attempted to bring a National Hockey League team to Houston. In June 1997 the NHL owners turned down his efforts to bring an expansion hockey team to Houston, stating, among other reasons, that the Compaq Center was not an adequate facility for an expansion hockey team, and that most Houstonians lacked interest in ice hockey according to a survey that the NHL did among Houston residents (only 16% said they watch ice hockey), and most of the 16% who supported ice hockey were from Canada or the Northern United States. McNair’s only option now would be to buy an existing franchise and move it. They began exploring options with the Edmonton Oilers, a once-proud franchise that had hit hard times economically. But the Edmonton Oilers refused to move to a city in Texas which had very little interest in ice hockey, also local stadium deals in Edmonton were approved. Plus the name would be very familiar to Houstonians as the hockey team had the name 'Oilers' in it's name which was the former football team's name.

Read more at Wikipedia.org