Jason Wolf

USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee

Warren Moon stood on the field at halftime of a game against the Dallas Cowboys in Nashville, foreign territory to one of the greatest football players of all time.

It was 2006, and the Tennessee Titans were retiring his No. 1 jersey.

Earlier that year, Moon became the first black quarterback inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He retired with the third-most passing yards and fourth-most touchdown passes in NFL history, despite playing his first six professional seasons in the CFL, where he led the Edmonton Eskimos to five consecutive Grey Cups.

Moon spent 17 seasons in the NFL — the first 10 with the Houston Oilers — but had never played on this field, in this city, for these fans. And the home team’s uniform? Its logo? He never wore those, either. His was Columbia blue. The helmet bore a derrick.

“Strange,” Moon called the moment.

“I’m standing there with my family and thanking everybody, but except for them seeing me on television, they probably never saw me play in person,” Moon told The Tennessean in December, as Marcus Mariota approached some of his single-season franchise records. “So it’s kind of a weird feeling. But that’s just kind of what we live in in today’s society. When franchises move, all the history from that franchise usually moves along with that team. And all my history and everybody else who played for the Oilers were in the same boat. It all moved to Tennessee.”

Moon has been a man about town this week in Houston, where the Falcons play the Patriots in Super Bowl LI on Sunday at NRG Stadium, home of the Texans, founded in 2002 and still the NFL’s newest team.

It’s been 20 seasons since the Oilers relocated to Tennessee in 1997, becoming the fourth NFL team to uproot in a three-year span. Los Angeles lost both the Raiders to Oakland and the Rams to St. Louis in 1995, and Cleveland lost the Browns to Baltimore in 1996, when they became the Ravens.

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In each instance, as is the case in today’s era of upheaval — with the Rams returning to L.A., the Chargers leaving San Diego to join them, and the Raiders flirting with Las Vegas — the catalyst for each franchise’s move revolved around tax dollars and deteriorating stadiums. Namely, the public declining to subsidize new or refurbished venues for wealthy team owners.

“In fact, there is a history of markets that get these projects done once a team leaves,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said Wednesday during his annual state of the league press conference. “That’s unfortunate, because I think it’s a painful way to do it.”

Cleveland, as it happened, passed a measure to fund stadium improvements a day after the Browns’ move was announced, leading the city and season ticket holders to sue Art Modell, who agreed to leave the franchise’s history and intellectual property behind. The Browns resumed play in 1999.

Bud Adams’ franchise rebranded as the Titans that same year. It had played as the Tennessee Oilers for two nomadic seasons until its new stadium opened in downtown Nashville, where Moon had his jersey retired.

The Titans retained the Oilers’ history, and the NFL agreed to retire the brand.

“So you kind of feel like you’ve lost a little bit of your identity,” Moon said, “because you don’t really have a team that you identify with as far as the name and the colors and all of that.”

***

Hall of Fame offensive lineman Bruce Matthews, the only man to play for both the Oilers and Titans and be enshrined in Canton, still calls Houston home.

So does most of the Adams family, including Titans controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk, who took over her late father’s franchise in March 2015.

“I still live in Houston, so I know how ingrained the Oilers were in the fabric of Houston,” Matthews told The Tennessean. “To this day, people will share what made the memories of the time spent with parents, dads specifically, special. It’s really hard. And I feel for those fans…

“Whoever, the Adamses, whoever they are (that own) the Titans, they ought to give back the Oilers’ history to the Texans,” Matthews said. “It’s just sitting up there (in Nashville), whereas I think the Texans could really utilize it. Anyone who knows anything about the Oilers is in Houston. And as much as we try to share our history — and (former Oilers player Mike Munchak) did a great job when he was the (Titans’) head coach of doing that — but there are just people up there who don’t know anything, nor do they care about the Oiler history. And I can’t blame them. But the people down here I think would appreciate it.”

Strunk, through a team spokesperson, declined a request to discuss the Oilers’ legacy.

The name “Titans” was originally used by the New York Jets, which like the Oilers were among the AFL’s founding franchises. (As were the Dallas Texans, now the Kansas City Chiefs). The Oilers won the first two AFL championships, in 1960 and ’61. The Jets won the title in ’68 and advanced to defeat the NFL’s Baltimore Colts in the third AFL-NFL Championship Game, the first one called the “Super Bowl,” paving the way for the leagues to merge in 1970.

The Tennessee Titans reached Super Bowl XXXIV in their first season at the downtown stadium, losing to the Rams in one of the most dramatic endings in league history. Kevin Dyson was tackled a yard short of scoring the potential game-tying touchdown as time expired.

Matthews will be on hand to watch his son, Jake, the Falcons’ starting left tackle, play in Super Bowl LI in the city where his boy was raised.

***

Titans general manager Jon Robinson grew up in west Tennessee.

“I had a Dallas Cowboys helmet and a Randy White jersey,” he said. “I’d go out in the yard and my dad would throw footballs to me. I know Randy didn’t catch many passes. But a boy could dream.”

Robinson was a student at Southeast Missouri State when the Oilers moved to Tennessee after two years of woeful attendance at the Astrodome in Houston. They played before similarly sparse crowds at the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, which wasn’t eager to support a team with its sights set on Nashville. Attendance the next season, at Vanderbilt, wasn’t much better.

Robinson didn’t rush out to buy Oilers gear.

“Because I don’t know that they really had a home yet,” he said.

Frank Wycheck, whose cross-field lateral to Dyson in the waning seconds of a stunning first-round playoff victory against the Buffalo Bills — a play cemented in league lore as the Music City Miracle — is one of the most beloved Titans in team history.

“But I experienced Houston,” Wycheck said. “People were great down there. I have no bad things to say about the city. But after we left, I didn’t understand how the Rockets got their own facility and the Astros got a baseball stadium built and the Texans got a franchise and then they got the retractable-roof stadium. It’s kind of a head-scratcher. Why couldn’t we get that done here?

“That’s something that I don’t really understand. Obviously, Mr. Adams paid $25,000 for (the franchise) when it first started, so it’s almost like the Oilers are on the shelf, packed away in a dusty warehouse, like ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ or something.”

Robinson recalls rooting for the Titans in his college apartment after the newly renamed franchise caught lightning in a bottle.

“I remember they came up a yard short and I threw plastic cups, plastic bowls, everything that I could get my hands on,” he said, “just with the frustration level that the home-state team came up short from being Super Bowl champions.”

Robinson spent 12 seasons as a scout for the Patriots and two years with the Buccaneers before being introduced as the Titans’ GM a little over a year ago, on his 40th birthday, in front of family and friends. He owns two Super Bowl rings from his time in New England, and imagines having one with the Titans’ fireball logo.

“That’s what we strive to do,” he said. “That’s why we ultimately show up to work every day, is to hopefully one day stand on top of the podium and hoist that trophy and say, ‘It’s coming home to Nashville.’”

***

Back in Houston, just days before the Super Bowl, Blaine Bishop sits on radio row on the top floor of the George R. Brown Convention Center. The former Oilers and Titans safety has just finished co-hosting the “3HL” afternoon show on 104.5-FM in Nashville.

“It’s kind of surreal, because this is where it all started, coming back around,” Bishop said. “And it’s kind of sad in a sense because the Oilers don’t even exist. The Houston Oilers. I played three years, and that was a great team my first year. Warren Moon and we can go down the list of all the guys I played with, and to see that that history is kind of lost in translation just because we moved the team. … Guys, man, that were really, really good players, and then now they’re just kind of out there.

“They have nowhere to go to say that that’s their home. They can’t go to a Texans game. The Texans are not claiming them. Then that made me think about the San Diego Chargers, what they’re doing. L.A. is still L.A. for the Rams. But it’s a tough deal. It’s just lost. (Fans in Nashville) want their team as the Tennessee Titans.

“(Bud Adams) was one of the founders of the AFL. He was one of the originals. I mean, damn. That’s gone, man. That’s wild. That’s really, damn, that’s tough on the legacy there.”

There are numerous examples throughout pro sports history of teams moving and keeping their name, even though it’s far more representative of their original home.

The NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers began in Minneapolis; the Utah Jazz in New Orleans.

Would the “Tennessee Oilers,” 20 years later, still sound strange?

There is a precedent for teams reviving their city’s legacy brand, once it’s been vacated by the original franchise. The Charlotte Bobcats switched to Hornets after the original franchise moved to New Orleans and became the Pelicans.

The NHL’s Winnipeg Jets became the Phoenix Coyotes, but the brand returned when the Atlanta Thrashers moved and switched.

“When the Raiders, if they move to Las Vegas, would they then change the logo, the uniform and rebrand?” Bishop wondered. “But then the Oakland Raiders’ history is huge…

“Would they keep the same colors? The same uniform? I don’t know. And you start looking at it and you’re talking about money, branding. You could make so much more money with new uniforms. The city could feel like it’s their team. I don’t know. The Raiders’ brand is really strong. It’d be tough to change that.”

***

Downstairs, on the first floor of the convention center, display cases are lined with classic and modern football memorabilia.

Signed Oilers helmets, pictures, pennants and footballs are up for auction and drawing a crowd.

“It’s really interesting coming into Houston,” said David Hunt, the president of Hunt Auctions. “Obviously we’re going to focus on Texas-area football teams, but clearly, clearly, far and away amongst Cowboys, Texans, Titans even, Houston Oilers stuff has outsold it three-to-one. Earl Campbell, Warren Moon, Haywood Jeffires, all those great names. And I don’t know if it’s the nostalgia, I don’t know if it’s the availability of it, but we’ve just sold an immense amount of that stuff already.”

Miguel Yepez, 41, is wearing an Oilers T-shirt.

“I cannot express how much love and just loyalty to the Oilers that I have,” Yepez said. “Just growing up, with my dad, every Sunday he’d have the carpet, he’d have his little shirt, he’d have everything and he got me into it. I continue to buy Oilers stuff for (my kids).

“And so the Titans, they’ve always — a little bit — they still have a little piece of my heart, because we know that they originated from the Oilers.”

His two young sons are wearing Texans jerseys.

That gear is in abundance at the sprawling NFL Experience store just a short walk away, as is merchandise from all 32 teams.

Alfredo Esparza, 42, walks out disappointed. He’s wearing an Oilers Starter jacket.

Moon had designed a limited edition New Era cap featuring Oilers colors and his autograph stitched into the brim. It went on sale this week for $49.99.

One remained.

“I’m willing to buy it,” Esparza said, “but they don’t want to sell it to me.”

It’s where so much of the Houston Oilers’ legacy resides.

In a case, on a shelf, behind glass.

Reach Jason Wolf atjwolf@tennessean.comand follow him on Twitter at@JasonWolfand on Instagram and Snapchat atTitansBeat.