Houston Oilers

The Houston Oilers were a professional American football team that played in Houston from its founding in 1960 to 1996 before relocating to Nashville to become the Tennessee Oilers for the 1997 and 1998 seasons, operating out of Nashville, Tennessee for the 1997 season while traveling to Memphis for every home game at the Liberty Bowl, playing the 1998 season at Vanderbilt in Nashville, and then becoming the Tennessee Titans in 1999. That same year, a new organization, the Houston Texans, was founded to replace the Oilers and began play in 2002 as an expansion team in the AFC South, creating a divisional rivalry between them and the Titans. The Oilers began play in 1960 as a charter member of the American Football League (AFL). The team won two AFL championships before joining the NFL as part of the AFL–NFL merger in the late 1960s.

The Oilers competed in the AFL's East division – along with the Buffalo Bills, the New York Jets and the Boston Patriots – before the merger, after which they joined the newly formed AFC Central. Throughout their existence the team was owned by Bud Adams. For the majority of their time in Houston, the team played their home games at the Astrodome, while Jeppesen Stadium and Rice Stadium hosted the team for their first eight years.

The Houston Oilers were the first champions of the American Football League, winning the 1960 and 1961 contests, but they never won another championship. The Oilers appeared in the 1962 AFL Championship, losing in double overtime to their in-state rivals, the Dallas Texans (now the Kansas City Chiefs); they also won the AFL East Division title in 1967 and qualified for the AFL Playoffs in 1969, both times losing to the Oakland Raiders. From 1978 to 1980, the Oilers, led by Bum Phillips and in the midst of the Luv Ya Blue campaign, appeared in the 1978 and 1979 AFC Championship Games, but lost both. The Oilers were a consistent playoff team from 1987 to 1993, an era that included both of the team's only division titles (1991 and 1993), as well as the dubious distinction of being on the losing end of the second largest comeback in NFL history. For the rest of the Oilers' time in Houston, however, they compiled losing seasons in almost every other year.

The Houston Oilers' main colors were Columbia blue and white, with scarlet trim, while their logo was a simple derrick. Oilers jerseys were always Columbia blue for home and white for away. The helmet color was Columbia blue with a white derrick from 1960 through 1965, silver with a Columbia blue derrick from 1966 through 1971, and Columbia blue with a white and scarlet derrick from 1972 through 1974, before changing to a white helmet with a Columbia blue derrick beginning in 1975 and lasting the remainder of the team's time in Houston.

Owner Bud Adams, who had openly threatened to move the team since the late 1980s, relocated the Houston Oilers to Tennessee after the 1996 season, where they were known as the Tennessee Oilers for the 1997 and 1998 seasons. The Tennessee Oilers played the 1997 season in Memphis before moving to Nashville in 1998. In 1999, to coincide with the opening of their new stadium, Adams changed the team name to the Tennessee Titans and the color scheme from Columbia Blue, Scarlet, and White to Titans Blue, Navy, White, and Silver with scarlet accents. The franchise retained the Houston Oilers' team history and records, while the team name was officially retired by then-NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, thus preventing a future Houston NFL team from using the Houston Oilers' name. This hasn't stopped other Houston based football teams paying tribute to the Oilers' legacy. The Houston Roughnecks, an XFL team founded in 2020, were pressured by the NFL to change their logo for looking too similar to that of the Oilers. However, they are still able to keep their name which is shared by the Oilers' mascot, The Roughneck. The University of Houston football team wore Oilers-style throwback uniforms during the Cougars' 2023 season opener against UTSA.