In any professional sport it’s easy to point to a few individuals who changed the landscape of a team, city or state, but it’s hard to pinpoint any one man in any one sport that is responsible for more change than former Tennessee Titans owner Bud Adams.
On Monday, Oct. 21, at the age of 90, K.S. “Bud” Adams Jr. passed away peacefully in his Houston home from natural causes.
Many younger Titans fans remember a very different Adams than the one who is widely regarded as one of the most influential men in not only NFL history, but sports history.
Yes, this is the same Adams that ran longtime head coach Jeff Fisher and handpicked quarterback Vince Young out of town in the same season. The same Adams that gave the double-finger salute to Buffalo Bills fans during a 41-17 home win in the 2009 season, but there was much more to this man than many truly realize.
Adams was the man in charge of the Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans for 54 years and was one of the co-founders of the American Football League that would eventually merge with the National Football League to create what we now know as the NFL.
In 1946, Adams started ADA Oil Company and 13 years later, on Aug. 3, he announced the formation of the AFL, starting with Adams’ Houston Oilers.
Adams housed many stars while the team was in Houston, such as Curly Culp, Earl Campbell, Billy “White Shoes” Johnson, current head coach Mike Munchak, current offensive line coach Bruce Mathews and the only African-American quarterback to be selected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Warren Moon.
In 1996, the Oilers played their last game in the Astrodome after a fairly bitter divorce between Adams and the city of Houston. The next season the team made their move to the Volunteer State and in 1999 took the field as the Tennessee Titans for the first time in what is now known as LP Field. At the end of that season, the Titans would famously fall just inches short to tying the Rams in Super Bowl XXXIV.
In similar fashion to the late Al Davis, many thought that Adams had lost touch with reality in his later years. However, like Davis, Adams’ influence on what is now the NFL cannot be debated.
The city of Nashville has grown into one of the premier cities in the country and a lot of credit for that goes to the Titans organization.
Sure, it’s fun to blame Adams for a lot of the turmoil that the Titans have been in over the last few years. Is he really responsible for all of it? Of course not, but he is responsible for some.
However, no matter how bad the team performs, the importance of Adams to the cities of Houston and Nashville, the states of Texas and Tennessee and the NFL as a whole aren’t debatable. The NFL Hall of Fame has been questioned on several occasions when it comes to who is, and isn’t, inducted each year. Hopefully, in the near future, the work of Adams will go rewarded and he will be enshrined in Canton with many other legends of the game.
