To a point. The problem is that the county was making payments on the bonds that were issued to redo the Astrodome at Bud's demand (or he was going to move to JAcksonville). That redo cost over $90M. What Bud wanted in order to stay was a dual purpose football/basketball stadium that was essentially the world's largest Transformer. The walls and roof would move in order to create the smaller arena for basketball. Of course, he demanded this without even asking the Rockets if they were ok with it. It was not a feasible deal.
In fact, we got THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE of this. Good ol' Bud signed an agreement that he would change his teams name to the Titans ONLY IF the NFL agreed that no other team would EVER be named the Oilers. ****ing pathetic. And now I'm angry.
Houston never would have named the Texans the Oilers anyway. They wanted something new, not the Oilers, who were perceived as perpetual losers.
That's not the point. The history, the throwback, etc. is the point. Matthews, Munchak, Moon and Campbell jerseys hanging in Nashville, where they never played, is the point.
The post I responded to seemed to bemoan the fact that a team couldn't be called the Oilers. I assumed it was referring to the next Houston team, which turned out to be the Texans. Also, I don't see what's stopping the Texans from hanging those jerseys, if they wanted to. I could be wrong on that though.
not sure of the official governence but by that rationale the cowboys should be able to hang them, too. the texans' franchise has absolutely nothing to do with those players. i think the texans have handled the oilers "situation" about as well as they can. they haven't ignored them... but they've made clear distinctions that that was then, and this is now. i love the oilers dearly. and i guess there's a part of me that wishes the team and its history stayed here. but i also didn't mind the fresh start. in 1995, we all felt that way - we'd be put through the ringer once too often. i knew i'd miss 'em... but i also knew i wouldn't - if that makes sense. them leaving didn't erase any of my memories anyway. btw, two things were happening at the time that really, in hindsight, screwed us and i haven't seen mentioned. first of all, nobody - not a soul - thought we'd ever get another franchise once the oilers left, and we certainly didn't think we'd get an expansion franchise. so there was really no football-related justification for keeping the name/history. cleveleand was pretty much promised another team before modell hit state lines, so keeping the brown tradition (and the inherent threats that went along with doing so - including a possible messy, costly lawsuit) made sense for them. also, that was the golden age of rocket basketball. we were all basking in the glow of them doing what the oilers never could. i often think our apathy would have been less if the rockets had been their standard-issue one and down back then. i think that really screwed the oilers over. but, we all thought we were in the midst of an unprecedented 14-peat, so who needed the underachieving, satan-owned oilers?
So the Titans are going to wear the Oilers' jerseys. I wonder if they're going to play the old Oilers' fight song? <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/TvWn_yGaA-Y&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/TvWn_yGaA-Y&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
I found my old Oilers jersey from when I was 8 years old, but my daughter refuses to wear it. It even has our last name on the back. # 12 Kenny "the Snake" Stabler. She had no idea how cool it is.
Here are what the throwbacks will look like: http://www.titansonline.com/news/ar...-caravan/fdeace16-9bd0-4e13-aec6-01fe2c43643b
