http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/inside_game/don_banks/news/2002/07/18/banks_mcnair/ Five football seasons have come and gone since the state of Texas was anything but a one-horse town in the eyes of the NFL. But Bob McNair changed that. On the football field, the nation's fourth-largest city was known more for what it had lost than what it had won. But Bob McNair erased that stigma. A new state-of-the-art stadium to replace the aging and antiquated Astrodome? Once again, it was Bob McNair to the rescue. Now, just hours away from fully realizing the dream that most observers felt was beyond his reach, Bob McNair is about to start getting repaid for his trouble. These are his glory days. The ones he has about 700 million reasons to bask in. Houston, we have a party. "Houston is going to go crazy," said McNair, whose expansion Texans open training camp of their inaugural season on Saturday, exactly 50 days before they kick off the regular season in a Week 1 Sunday-night showdown with archrival Dallas. "I think the whole city of Houston is going to be bedlam for the period leading up to the opening game." NFL owners come in many different shapes and sizes, but it's almost impossible not to think that Houston got it just about perfect with the newest inductee in the world's most exclusive 32-member club. McNair, 65, has hit nearly every right note in his four-year quest to bring the NFL back to Houston, and he's done it in style. From his record $700 million expansion fee commitment to the construction of the 69,500-seat Reliant Stadium, a retractable-roof facility that raises the luxury bar once again for subsequent NFL stadium projects. Throw in McNair's many fan-friendly moves, well-received front office and coaching hires, and his penchant for the kind of direct, plain talking that NFL owners aren't known for, and you have a pretty appealing package nestled between McNair's bald pate and trademark cream-colored saddleshoes. Kind of the anti-Bud Adams, if you will. But while McNair doesn't have a mark on him yet -- football fans and the media being what they are -- he knows the party is almost over, even though it has just begun. "At least one game," said McNair, when asked how long he expected his Houston honeymoon to last. "I speak with great assurance on that. They'll give us at least one game. I tell everyone now that the reason I'm so popular is we're undefeated. We'll enjoy it while it lasts." At this point in his life, McNair always assumed he'd be indulging himself in his twin passions of golf and horse racing (he owns a 1,500-acre horse farm and racing stable in Kentucky). But then Adams and the Oilers left disgruntledly for Tennessee after the 1996 season, and McNair found himself caught up in chasing a replacement team for the city in which he has lived since 1960. "It really was more a feeling of importance to the city and civic pride that was the motivator for me," said McNair, a billionaire who made most of his Texas-sized fortune in the heady days following the deregulation of the energy industry. "I thought it was important for the fourth-largest city in the country to have a team. I was in a position, maybe the best position, to make it happen." "What happened is when the Oilers first left town, the first year everybody says 'Who cares?' The second year they said, 'Maybe it makes a little difference.' By the third year, they're saying, 'Oh, my gosh, I miss football.' That's what tends to happen.’" It's easy to forget now that he's one of the league office's new favorite guys, but McNair and Houston's path to the NFL wasn't exactly paved with gold. The league wanted Los Angeles to be its 32rd franchise and basically gave that city every chance to mount an expansion team push that could come remotely close to matching Houston's. Of course, being L.A., it couldn't, and the NFL was all but forced to give those football-hungry Houstonians their due. At least after McNair pulled out his checkbook and wrote that fat $700 million check. "There was no doubt that L.A. was getting preferential treatment," McNair recalled. "That was quite obvious to me and to most people. I've been the underdog before and I don't mind being the underdog. So that didn't bother me too much." Owners of NFL expansion teams are supposed to get used to being the underdog. But McNair said he first learned how to be patient while coaching 10 years of youth football in the Houston area (McNair's son and ex-SMU star Craig James played together for several seasons). In McNair's first year of coaching, the league stacked the rosters so that his squad was mostly young and inexperienced. The Mighty McNairs, or whatever they were called, took their lumps that year but then grew into a formidable bunch and won several championships. Sounds like a blueprint for McNair's Texans to me. "We've got some great front-line players," said McNair, whose Texans picked up five former Pro Bowl selections in the expansion draft, and took Fresno State quarterback David Carr first overall. "We just don't have enough of them." "To be realistic about it, by the time we're in our third year, we want to be competitive. We feel like we have as good a chance as anybody when you step on the field." Just not this season, when the Texans will no doubt win a few, and lose quite a few more. But most importantly, Houston is back in the game. And by now, we all know it has Bob McNair to thank for that. Don Banks covers pro football for CNNSI.com.
