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

In 1996 the Oilers played their last game in Houston as they left for Tennessee, and in 1997 Houston was already looking for another team. The city sued the Oilers millions of dollars for leaving town, but it had no effect as the Oilers already had their mind set. Billionaires Bob McNair and his partner Steve Patterson tried to revive the city of Houston by bring another National Football League team to the area. Patterson was then named head of the new organization.

They got an immediate moral boost as they went to NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue. Tagliabue nailed down to three cities for the next team as he looked at Cleveland, Houston, and Los Angeles as the top three places. Tagliabue, who had promised a NFL team to Cleveland after the Browns left in 1995 delivered to Cleveland as he announced in 1998 that Cleveland would indeed be the 31st team in the league. It was originally though a team would move to Cleveland to keep the NFL at 30 teams, but in that 1998 season, Patterson was pleased to find out the Cleveland Browns would have their own team once again boosting the level to 31 teams and Tagliabue announcing he wanted to add a 32nd team to either Houston, Los Angeles, or Toronto.

Not to worried about Toronto coming to the NFL, Patterson was quite worried about Los Angeles and when entertainment guru Michael Ovitz announced he would lead a privately financed $750 million project for a stadium in Carson, California, it made the fear come to reality. In late October 1998, Paul Tagliabue announced he would have a decision by April 1999 and his decision would have the 32nd NFL team. Now Ovitz was having a war of money in his own town, real estate developer Ed Roski proposed a 68,000-seat arena inside the shell of the Los Angeles Coliseum. On March 16, 1999 NFL owners voted 29-2 for the expansion team to be located in Los Angeles if they could put together an acceptable ownership team and stadium deal by September 15. When NFL officials went back in April, neither team had come together, the city was not allowing tax dollars to be spent on the stadium, and neither group was prepared to build the stadium that Houston had promised for the last 6 months.

When the NFL officials revisited in late May, Ovitz had changed ways and had plans for a 60-acre lot for parking spots, garages, shopping areas, and a stadium. Looked nice, but the price was bewildering at $225 million. Tagliabue was getting frustrated with Los Angeles as he told McNair to get talks back up with his expansion committee. On September 9, 1999, Officials met with Houston and Los Angeles officials in Atlanta for one last proposed deal. Los Angeles’ football hopes were not completely dead, but they were on the dieing end of the stick. Then in the first week of October, Ovitz announced his group was willing to offer $540 million for the NFL Franchise. Later that week, Houston’s McNair offered a bid of $700 million.

On the morning of October 6, 1999 the NFL owners voted 29-0 to award the 32nd franchise to the city of Houston. After that things began to move fast as they searched for a team name, a logo, and even hired formal Washington Redskins General Manager Charley Casserole as Executive Vice President/General Manager in January 2000. That year they observed the first groundbreaking for the new Reliant Stadium, which would become the NFL’s first retractable roof stadium. In late 2000 the team unveiled their new team logo and went and hired formal Carolina Panthers head coach and at the time current Jacksonville Jaguars defensive coordinator as their first head coach.