Houston Texans: Bob McNair’s legacy is honorable yet quite complicated
Houston Texans founder and owner Bob McNair passed away Friday at the age of 81. What should his legacy be framed as? Let’s take a look at the details.
The Houston Texans suffered a significant loss Friday and I’m not talking about on the gridiron. Bob McNair, founder and chairman of the Houston Texans, passed away peacefully at the age of 81.
This news comes as sort of a damper to the Houston Texans current franchise-tying seven-game win streak as he succumbed to a decades-long battle with skin cancer as well as leukemia. I’m positive that many of us are connected with someone who was been affected by this awful disease.
It certainly hits home as a man who had announced back in 2014 that he was undergoing treatments and was fighting for his life. For a while there, he emerged with the strength and courage to shepherd his brainchild that was just a figment of his imagination at the turn of this past century.
He is no stranger to emerging from adversity, having gone bankrupt in the energy business before clawing his way back to the top.
But going into last season, I had noticed that his appearances had been reduced and they were down to zilch this season. He wasn’t on the sidelines with his son Cal in the team’s Week 3 home opener against the New York Giants to which I found quite unusual.
Little did we know that his cancer had returned; and once again, he was fighting for his vitality. I was afraid that the latter was the notion and it turned out to be what truly happened.
I’ll never forsake Bob McNair’s relentless but fruitful request to bring football back to Houston after a nasty divorce headed up by the late Bud Adams. McNair was everything Adams wasn’t — calm, cool, calculated and wanted the best for Houston sports fans alike.
It was a rough five years without having a football team to root for as I had a true hollow feeling within myself as if something was missing. After the 1996 season, when news of the severance was to be a reality, I was a sophomore high school at the time so I can remember the happening quite vividly.
My aforementioned feelings developed over time because at the moment when the decision was announced that the Houston Oilers would be moving to Tennessee, I was okay with it because of my disgust with Adams’ ruthless greed to have a multi-million dollar playpen for himself as a replacement for the aging Astrodome.
It just wasn’t the right timing for him to make such a demand on the taxpayers as the Houston Oilers hadn’t had much success since their 12-4 1993 season, which ended with a thud in a 28-20 divisional round loss to a Joe Montana-led Kansas City Chiefs.
Oilers’ fans still had a bad taste in their mouths from their Wild Card playoff bout with the Buffalo Bills from the season previous where they blew a 35-3 lead as a result of a landslide of offensive production from four improbable touchdown passes from Bills’ QB — who is now the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts — Frank Reich, widely considered the hero of the greatest comeback in NFL history.
The Oilers went 17-31 in their final three seasons in Houston and had been mostly begotten during that stretch.
Although there was never a public referendum for a new Oilers’ stadium to be built, it was clear Adams was not happy with his situation. He had been leasing the Dome from former Houston Astros’ owner Drayton McLane and wanted a facility of his own. It didn’t happen so when he got the funding secured from Nashville to build a new stadium, he was gone within three shakes of lamb’s tail.
However, McNair was ready to jump into his newest business venture and it would certainly change the positive trajectory of Houston Sports forever. Let’s dig further.