If you’re a longtime Houstonian reading this, there is probably no need for me to reset the saga of the late Bud Adams, owner of the Tennessee Titans (nee the Houston Oilers), packing his franchise’s things back in the mid-1990’s, and moving up to Tennessee. You know the full story.
For a couple seasons, the franchise had an identity crisis, going by the odd moniker “Tennessee Oilers” before converting to the Titans in 1999. With the conversion to the Titans, all then-current vestiges of the Oilers were swept aside. The Adams family kept the Oilers’ team history, but the old helmets, uniforms, and color scheme were dead and buried.
The Oilers were functionally dead, and as a logo and brand, remained buried, until the 2023 NFL season, when Adams’ daughter Amy, who runs things since the old man is long gone, decided to dust them off for two games in 2023, one of which was a 19-16 loss to the Texans in Week 15.
Leading up to that game, the Titans’ uniform choice was as big a topic as the game itself. The timing of Adams reviving them, during a time where the Texans were revising their own uniforms with a light blue color featured in one of the alternative combinations, was lost on no one. Adams is as petty as it gets when it comes to tweaking the city of Houston and flexing her ownership of the beloved Columbia Blue. Hell, she even had her head coach, Mike Vrabel, wear a cowboy hat à la Bum Phillips, who was the Oilers coach about half a century ago.
Well, all those strong feelings bubbled to the surface again this past week, as Adams decided to go whole hog into making the Oilers’ colors a permanent color scheme for her team. Indeed, instead of a game or two wearing actual Oiler uniforms, Adams is opting to have these uniforms for every single game, with the new “T” logo replacing the oil derrick:
As you can imagine, the new uniform reveal led to Houstonians fighting with Nashvillians on social media over who owned what color, which fan base was more “big mad” than the other, and tons of unintelligent discourse over who was “renting space” in whose head.
I thought we were through with this two years ago, and that we all got it out of our system, but this new full time uniform design was like Adams starting up a brawl all over again. Personally, I find debating the ownership of a color to be a big waste of time, but whatever. Here are a few more thoughts on this issue:
If I were a Titans fan, this is the part that would terrify me….
Sure, it’s really cool to get new uniforms, and even I, a staunch supporter of all things Houston, can admit that they are good looking duds. Even the reveal video is really well done. However, those videos usually feature your team’s best few players. So, at some point the endorphin rush will wear off, and Titans fans, you will rewatch that video, and you’ll realize “Holy crap, Chimere Dike is one of our three best players. We still suck!”
Adams’ little cosplay party did seem to piss off many Titans fans
I know Amy Adams might have a hard time believing this, but there are many Titans fans who couldn’t care less about the Houston Oilers, or the team’s Houston history. Those people became fans of the team when they became the Titans. So the dark blue color scheme, with the flames flying out of the “T” logo, those are crucial to how those folks identify with the team. For those fans, Adams basically just threw that all in the garbage so that she could antagonize Houstonians. That’s your owner, Tennessee.
These were the dumbest arguments I saw…
As you can imagine, this border skirmish (over a uniform color) led to some of the most absurd takes in a long, long time. These were my favorites:
The Texans will be revealing a new uniform later this year
I’m not sure how many Texans fans are aware of this, and I’m certain most Titans fans are unaware, but the Texans will be unveiling a new version of their uniform in the near future, called the “rivalry edition.” I have yet to see it, but I’d bet my life savings there are some “H-town blue” highlights and features in that uniform, which means we get to do this all over again sometime in the next few months!