As a collective group, we feel like we don’t talk enough about how weird it is sometimes that the Tennessee Titans wear another team’s uniform.
The reason/story behind this move is well documented: they were the Houston Oilers until 1997, when then-owner Bud Adams decided to move the team due to low attendance numbers and lack of progress on a new stadium contract. So Adams assembled the team and moved them to Nashville, where they played under the Oilers moniker for two seasons before renaming themselves the Titans.
The decision left a sour taste in the mouths of many fans, and the Titans’ near-history with the Oilers is still a sore subject for many people today – which makes Tennessee deciding to wear Oilers jerseys once or twice a year. even more confusing year. Nostalgia sells tickets, but openly embracing the identity you willingly abandoned because it wasn’t profitable enough at the time is a strange move (to put it lightly).
And if you don’t believe me, just listen to Hannah McNair, president of the Houston Texans Foundation and wife of team owner Cal McNair. In a recent interview, both men were asked how it felt to beat the Titans this year. while Tennessee wore their Oilers uniforms. While Cal dodged the question with some classic lines straight out of the company playbook, Hannah gave fans what they wanted, indulging in enough talk to make headlines..
“I think Houston really liked this game.” she says. “Especially winning that game there when they were wearing something that Houston is very proud of. And you know, Tennessee doesn’t care. It’s not as meaningful to their fans as we saw in a survey about 20 years ago when they switched to the Titans. The Oilers didn’t mean much to Titans fans. So winning there meant a lot to Houston because they were pushing that in our face.
We like it. Most NFL rivalries are rooted in at least some sort of tradition, but few are based on small, uniform beefs. This is what makes the Titans-Texans so special. The Colts and Ravens don’t have that type of beef, and that’s probably because the Colts don’t just wear random purple and black twice a year. But as long as the Titans continue to decide to dress up as Oilers for a day, we’re all rooting for Houston fans to be salty about it.
