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 in 2002 as an expansion team after Houston's previous franchise, the Houston Oilers(now the Tennessee Titans), moved to Nashville, Tennessee. The club is one of five in the NFL that has yet to qualify for the Super Bowl, and the only team in the league that has not achieved a playoff berth.

The Houston Texan's principal owner and chairman is Bob McNair and the minority owner and vice chairman is Chuck Watson.

1997 - Bringing Football Back to Houston

In June 1997, Bob McNair and Chuck Watson were bypassed by the National Hockey League in an attempt to bring a team to Houston.

Two weeks later, Houston 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. 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 learned that the NFL officially awarded Cleveland its promised expansion franchise, making it the NFL's 31st team; NFL Commissioner Tagliabue said that the league would likely add a 32nd team in the next two years, with the three top candidates being Toronto (which would have been the NFL's first franchise outside the USA), Los Angeles (the USA's second largest media market, and the victim of two relocated franchises in the 1990's), and Houston.