Nissan Stadium: Tennessee Gets the NFL

The stadium across the Cumberland River from downtown Nashville was built for a team that started life in Houston, traveled through Memphis, and nearly lost its identity entirely before finding a home. What is today called the Tennessee Titans began in nineteen fifty-nine as the Houston Oilers, a charter franchise of the American Football League founded by oil magnate Bud Adams. The Oilers won the first two AFL championships in nineteen sixty and nineteen sixty-one, competing in a league that barely anyone took seriously at the time.

The AFL merged with the NFL in nineteen seventy, and the Oilers became a permanent part of professional football. But Adams grew frustrated with the Houston Astrodome and the city's unwillingness to fund a new stadium. After decades of negotiation, he announced in nineteen ninety-six that the franchise was leaving Texas. The team played a season in Memphis as the Tennessee Oilers while Nashville's new stadium was being built, then moved to Nashville in nineteen ninety-eight.

The name Tennessee Titans was unveiled in nineteen ninety-eight, debuting the following year when the stadium opened. The franchise wanted a break from the Oilers identity and landed on Titans, a reference to the mythological strength associated with the name and, loosely, to the large rivers that define the Tennessee landscape.

The stadium opened on September twelfth, nineteen ninety-nine, and in that very first season the Titans came within inches of their finest moment. They reached the Super Bowl against the Saint Louis Rams, and in the final seconds of the game, with the Titans trailing by one touchdown, wide receiver Kevin Dyson caught a pass at the five-yard line and was tackled short of the goal line as time expired. That play, known as One Yard Short, remains one of the most analyzed moments in Super Bowl history. Nashville has been a football town ever since.