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.

1997

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.

Now committed to the task at hand, McNair and Houston got an immediate morale boost in October 1997, when the NFL Stadium Committee reported to Commissioner Paul Tagliabue on the current attractiveness of Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Houston. Cleveland had lost the Browns in 1995 and had been promised by Tagliabue that the next expansion team would play there, bringing the league total to 31 teams. A future expansion to 32 teams seemed both logical and destined to happen, and Tagliabue praised McNair's strong initial efforts. Encouraged by the commissioner's strong words, local support for a return of the NFL to Houston spread like wildfire across the city. Two days later, Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo (HLS&R) officials announced they would push for a domed stadium as part of the bid to lure the NFL back to Houston.

1998

In March 1998, McNair and company got more good news when the league made it official that Cleveland would receive an expansion franchise, making it the 31st team in the NFL. Houstonians had been concerned that the league would allow an existing franchise to move to Cleveland, thus keeping the number of teams at 30 and dealing a serious blow to Houston's hopes of securing the next expansion franchise. Tagliabue said that the league would likely add a 32nd team in the next two years in either Houston, Los Angeles, or Toronto. The mention of Los Angeles worried plenty of Houston officials. Television money had become such a huge part of the NFL that it seemed unlikely the owners would pass up the chance to re-introduce professional football to the second-biggest TV market in the country. In early May, those fears became reality as entertainment guru Michael Ovitz announced he would lead a largely privately financed $750 million project to build a stadium in Carson, California.