Titanic Disappointment - Soapbox Jr.

But a few months ago I did write about sharing Tennessee Titans football with Dad and a melancholy stroll around the soon to be empty stadium now known as Nissan Stadium on the last home game of the 2025 season, so we’ll call this a follow up.

Since the middle of February, rumors began to swirl about a new logo and look for the Tennessee Titans, which is the team I cheer for… not that there has been much to cheer for the past few years, starting with the team itself.

I was against the firing of Mike Vrabel as head coach. There were obviously issues that needed to be dealt with, but blowing up a team and bad coaching choices are what eventually led to Vrabel’s hiring. 

The Titans hired Ken Whisenhunt who managed to win 3 games in part of 2 seasons, the interim head coach, Mike Mularkey managed to get them back into the playoffs the following season when he was hired as head coach, but despite beating the Chiefs in the Wild Card round, he was fired after losing to the Patriots in the Divisional round. I thought he got a raw deal, but football is a business, and I don’t call the shots.

I was optimistic with Vrabel’s hiring, but I felt he made a few rookie coaching mistakes, had some problems that needed to be addressed in his last couple of seasons and early on didn’t seem to put a lot of emphasis on the importance of a solid placekicker which came to be an issue from time to time, but overall, I thought he was a solid coach who just needed to fix a few things here and there, and when Titans owner, Amy Adams Strunk fired him, I felt like it was a mistake.

In hindsight, given the controversy currently brewing around his personal life, I’m willing to cut her some slack, because it would definitely reflect poorly on the organization.

Then Brian Callahan stepped into the position and managed to eke out one more win than the “Whis” did, so he went bye bye last year.

Counting the interim coach when Callahan was fired last season, we’re now into what will be the fourth coach in four seasons. In 2024, the Titans did well enough to score the #1 pick in the NFL Draft, quarterback Cam Ward and to pick 4^thoverall on Thursday where they curiously picked a wide receiver, something that has never seemed panned out for the franchise.

I certainly understand the need to get Cam more offensive weapons on the field. In 2025, Ward showed flashes of greatness, he also showed that he was a rookie playing with a lot of missing pieces on offense, like a solid offensive line to protect him from being flattened repeatedly throughout 60 minutes of football, as well a top notch running back and decent wide receivers, but even the ESPN crew was questioning picking the WR they did as high as they picked when he was probably going to be there later in the draft.

Now bad – or shall I say – unpredictable decisions by this franchise go waaaaaay back. Titans/Oilers founder KS “Bud” Adams was a risk taker, and sometimes that worked out well, and sometimes it didn’t. 

He and Chiefs owner/founder, Lamar Hunt, were part of the “Foolish Club” which had the audacity to think they could build a league to compete with the NFL and thus the AFL was born and changed to course of professional football forever when the two leagues competed in the first Super Bowl in 1967 and eventually merged in 1970.

He was unpredictable sometimes, which is why Tennessee has a football team in the first place.

Bud played hardball with the city of Houston over a new stadium. Adams argued that the aging Astrodome was obsolete and his conversations with the city about securing a new stadium fell on deaf ears. So, Bud started talking to other cities, there was a report that before Jacksonville got an expansion team, Bud met with city officials about the possibility of the Oilers relocating there, but eventually Tennessee was decided to be the new home.

The first season was in Memphis, the second season was at Dudley Field on Vanderbilt University’s campus. Dad and I went to the last Tennessee Oilers home game… which felt like watching a Houston Oilers preseason game. It just lacked the full NFL experience. But one thing they did at that last game was they announced the new team name and logo, Tennessee Titans with a TN flag tri-star configuration with a stylized “T” in the middle complete with a trail of flames which made it look cool… powerful… Titanic…

Along with the new name, stadium and logo, new uniforms were unveiled and they stood out from anything else in the NFL at the time, and while the traditional Oilers Columbia Blue was prominently featured, navy blue was the base color and it made for a great look. While I loved the Oilers and their history, this was better. This was ours, this was Tennessee Titans football.

That 1999 season was truly magical, undefeated at home, a miraculous home playoff win against the Bills, defeating future division rivals in Indianapolis, beating Jacksonville for the third time and then one of the most exciting Super Bowls of all time, even if they couldn’t pull out the win.

2000 season was strong as well, but the dreaded Ravens came to town and knocked my team out of the playoffs.

For the next 25 years, plenty of highs and plenty of lows have come and gone.

Now we’ve got a new coach (again) a new stadium in 2027, an old/new look and lots of questions.

I may be in the minority, but I am not a fan of a lot of the new directions this franchise is going in. 

I think the new uniforms are a disappointment. Not that they look bad, but they are essentially the Houston Oilers throwbacks with some modifications. The logo loses the flames, and some of its impact.

Now if this had been the look they unveiled in 1999, I would have been fine with it. It would have made more sense changing the Oilers oil derrick to the tri-star design and the Columbia Blue jerseys and pants would have not bothered me. It would have been a slight tweaking of the Oiler’s identity and that would have been that. But we got a complete overhaul in 1999 from top to bottom with emphasis on swords and the state of Tennessee with navy blue as a strong base color, the flaming logo and I would say it exceeded all expectations.

It felt like it belonged to us and not just recycled Oilers jerseys.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the Oilers throwbacks, the Oilers were our #2 team behind the now hated Cowboys when I was growing up, but they just redesigned the Titans uniforms nine years ago in a much subtler design change than what we ended up with this year.

Maybe I’m alone here, but we’re stepping backward to pay tribute to a team that has been dormant for approaching 30 years.

There are fans who weren’t even born in 1999 or don’t remember the Houston Oilers, so it just feels like the Adams Family (snap snap) doesn’t understand what Bud did, that the Titans brand is different from the Oilers, and most Titans fans were not Houston Oilers fans.

Then there’s the new stadium.

Dad bought two club level PSLs in 1999 for $1,500 a piece, and we later purchased three more one section over, so we’ve got $7,500 in credit, which can be applied to the purchase of the new stadium PSLs. 

It turns out that the cheapest club level PSLs start at $20,000 a piece. I was flabbergasted. I know this is a 2-billion-dollar stadium and everything is all-inclusive (except for liquor).

I finally opted for the nosebleed section of the new stadium for an even trade, but the bottom line is this stadium is going to be out of the price range of most fans.

But they desperately want a Super Bowl in Nashville and this is the only way to get it, so the fans get the shaft.

So, I’m just a little disappointed in something that meant so much to Dad and I has changed so much.

It’s like the end of an era.

Unless something changes, I’m unlikely to make it to any games this season which is why walking the stadium and locating Dad’s name on the Founders Wall meant so much to me.

It was bittersweet.

Maybe I’m alone in my thinking, maybe the draft will go better than it appears to have started out, maybe this will be the coach to finally bring home the Lombardi trophy, maybe I’ll adjust to the new/old uniforms, and maybe I’ll make it to a game in 2026, but I don’t think it’s ever going to have the excitement it did when there was something magical in Nashville when the Tennessee Titans took the field.

It was electric.

Titan Up.

What do you think?

Let’s all make the day count!

Pray for our troops, our police, the Peace of Jerusalem and our nation.

God Bless America!

#SonyReleaseHonkyTonkAve

#BenghaziAintGoingAway #End22

- Charlie Daniels, Jr.