Houston Texans

About Houston Texans

The Houston Texans is 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, changing their name to the Tennessee Titans in 1999.

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. 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.

Barely two weeks later, the fourth-largest city in the United States found itself without professional football for the first time since 1959 as Houston Oilers owner Bud Adams got the final approval to move his team to Tennessee. A lawsuit filed by the city of Houston, Harris County, and other parties was settled with Adams paying millions of dollars for leaving town. In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, local entrepreneur and San Diego Padres owner John J. Moores, whose name was often attached to efforts to return the NFL to Houston, said that the city’s football fans would be in for a long, dry spell without football and that he did not foresee another league expansion in the next 10 years. While efforts to get an NHL team in Houston faltered, McNair made his decision to set his sights higher and founded Houston NFL Holdings. Steve Patterson, who had been working with McNair in an attempt to bring NHL to Houston, was immediately named as head of the new organization.