Get Free Info About the Houston Texans

The Houston Texans are an American football team that plays in the National Football League. The Texans are based in Houston, Texas. They play in the Southern Division of the American Football Conference (AFC). The Texans are an expansion team, joining the NFL in 2002 after Houston's original team, the Houston Oilers, moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 1997, who in 1999 became the Tennessee Titans.

The original Houston team, the Oilers, were created in 1960 by Bud Adams, who still owns the franchise in the form of the Tennessee Titans, today. The Oilers were a strong team in the AFL before the AFL-NFL merger. Adams was rather unpopular in Houston, where he made many demands of the city and threatened to move when the city did not do as he pleased. He forced the city to pay some $67 million in renovations to the Oiler's home field, the Astrodome, in 1987. The city did, and is still paying for those renovations. However, Adams made good on other threats to move in 1997 when he took the team to Tennessee).

In 1999 the NFL was prepared to open up new expansion teams in one of several cities: Los Angeles, Cleveland or Houston. Their first choice was Los Angeles, one of the largest U.S. cities without a professional football franchise. The NFL set terms for the city to put together an ownership team and make plans to build a proper stadium. When the NFL commissioners went to inspect on L.A.'s progress in 1999, however, they found that competing teams of potential owners were intractable in their contradictory positions and that the city had not appropriated any taxes to the building of a stadium. In short order, the approval for an expansion team shifted to Houston.

The Houston Texans were born shortly there after, in 2002. Reliant Stadium was built in 2000 for the new team, which also hosts College Football's Texas Bowl (it is also the first NFL stadium to have a retractable roof). They have made good progress as a team, but have yet to win any championships or Super Bowls.