NFL: Titans' name now a natural

Tennessee Titans: a name that raised some quizzical scalps in Nashville upon its tiding as a replacement for the old Oilers designation in late ’98. Judging by the fewer “Oilers” slips that you now hear, it didn’t take long for the new roll of the tongue to feel natural.

It wasn’t so much as getting familiar with a new name that seemed to confuse local residents, but the name itself. Titans? What’s that? It’s likely that few knew or remembered that the New York Jets were originally the Titans.

And with an even bigger clue out there at the time, looming like a guiding star, an alarming number of Tennesseans admitted to not knowing what a Titan(s) was. The bigger clue? A blockbuster movie called “Titanic.” Big Ship! Titan-ic (ic – a suffix meaning “pertaining to.”) Just the largest, most colossal steamship to ever tread saltwater.

A Titan is a Giant in sports parlance, and in definition, but it requires a little sports history to explain the connection.

In 1959, Kenneth (Bud) Adams named his new American Football League entry – and National Football League rival, before a later merger – the Houston Oilers (“‘Cause, son, in Texas ‘awl’ is king!).

Meanwhile, the AFL-brethren city of New York had the NFL-football Giants, and the city had once claimed the baseball giants. Titans? Giants? It was a natural fit for two behemoths.

But with a new Titans owner, Sonny Werblin, in 1963, came some housecleaning and a new name. By now, New York had welcomed the baseball Mets (they actually breathed life as the Metropolitans but that’s another story), so the rhyming quality of Jets-Mets, and, one assumes, the proximity of historic La Guardia Airport, one of the world’s largest and thus busiest flight centers, provided the push for Werblin to sweep out the old and make way for the new – the Titans became the Jets.

The Jets impassively held onto the old and discarded Titans handle until Adams came a-callin’ for dibs. The Jets offered to give up the name without a whimper and the two-year-old Tennessee Oilers swiftly vaporized like fumes from a gas pump.

Given the circumstances, it is reasonably logical to figure why the original New York franchise chose the Titans name, it’s a stretch though to conclude why Adams did, its alliterative merit notwithstanding. Nonetheless, it was not a bad call, judging by wild fan support enjoyed today and merchandising sales rivaled only by the Dallas Cowboys.

The fact that Tennessee actually has a few oil wells, with most of the drilling in Overton County far outside of Nashville proper, was of little or no significance.

Enough people in Tennessee had made it clear that they didn’t want a hand-me-down name. Adams, confronted with selling seats for a new stadium in downtown Nashville, showed some real class in bowing to their wishes. It couldn’t have been an easy decision. After all, this was his baby, a franchise founded during the latter term of President Ike.

You could even say it was big of him.