An oil man’s AFL club, a Memphis detour and a classical name.

The Titans began as the Houston Oilers. The Handbook of Texas Online, published by the Texas State Historical Association, says the club started play in 1960 as one of the original franchises of the newly formed American Football League, and that K. S. “Bud” Adams was the original owner and also served as club president. Adams, it says, chose the name Oilers for his Houston franchise for “sentimental and social reasons”. English Wikipedia describes Adams as a Houston oil man who founded the team in 1959 after failed attempts to bring an NFL expansion team to the city.

The Houston homes changed as the team grew. The Handbook of Texas says the Oilers first played in a renovated high-school stadium, Jeppesen, and from 1968 leased the three-year-old Astrodome. Wikipedia says the club spent several seasons at Rice Stadium from 1965 before that move, and that it joined the NFL as part of the 1970 merger of the two leagues.

The move to Tennessee took several years to complete. The Tennessee Encyclopedia, published by the Tennessee Historical Society, says Oilers executives first approached Nashville officials in July 1995, that Mayor Phil Bredesen and Governor Don Sundquist signed an exclusive negotiating agreement, and that in mid-November 1995 the city and the team agreed terms that required a new open-air stadium on the east bank of the Cumberland River, facing downtown. Opponents forced a referendum, and on 7 May 1996 Nashville voters approved the deal.

The new name followed the new address. The Tennessee Encyclopedia says the team played its 1997 season as the Tennessee Oilers in Memphis and its 1998 home schedule at Vanderbilt University’s Dudley Field in Nashville, and that in the summer of 1998 Bud Adams announced that the name would change to the Tennessee Titans, with new uniforms for the 1999 season. Wikipedia says an advisory committee appointed by Adams chose the name, which was unveiled on 14 November 1998 as a nod to Nashville’s nickname, the “Athens of the South”, earned for its classical architecture and its many institutions of higher learning. For 1999 the team moved into the new stadium, then called Adelphia Coliseum and known as Nissan Stadium since 2015.

A derrick, a flaming T, a sword stripe and a shield.

The Oilers wore their industry on the helmet. Wikipedia says the 1960 logo was an oil derrick, originally nicknamed “Ol’ Riggy”, a name dropped before the 1974 season, and that apart from small colour changes the derrick stayed until 1999. The uniforms paired blue or white jerseys with red trim and white pants; the helmets were blue in the early 1960s and again from 1972 to 1974, silver from 1966 to 1971 and white from 1975 to 1998, and light blue road pants were common from 1972 until 1994. During the two Tennessee Oilers seasons the team used an alternate logo that combined elements of the flag of Tennessee with the derrick.

The 1999 rebrand moved from industry to state. Wikipedia says the Titans logo was a circle holding three stars, representing Tennessee’s three Grand Divisions, around a large “T” trailed by flames like a comet. The uniforms had white helmets, red trim and navy or white jerseys, with the outer shoulders and sleeves in a light Titans blue. The flames tie to the name: Wikipedia says fans in the end zones became known as the Flame Pit and wore flame headwear, and links the motif to the Titan Prometheus, who in Greek myth stole fire for humanity. A Titans blue alternate jersey arrived in 2003, became the primary home jersey from 2008 to 2014, and gave way to navy again in 2015.

The uniforms were redesigned twice in the following decade. Wikipedia says that on 4 April 2018 the club introduced new uniforms that kept navy, Titans blue and white but added red and silver elements, with navy helmets carrying a single silver sword-shaped stripe and metallic grey face masks. On 23 July 2023 the team unveiled powder blue Oilers throwbacks, and on 27 March 2025 it restored the Titans blue jersey as its primary home jersey.

The 2026 identity looked back to Houston. The Associated Press reported on 12 March 2026 that the Titans unveiled new uniforms and logos at a party in Nashville, calling it the franchise’s third set of uniforms since the Titans name arrived in 1999, and saying the look leaned heavily on the Oilers’ history. The new primary logo, “The Shield”, uses light Titans blue, white and red with the three stars; a secondary mark, “The Football”, carries a “T” and an “N” for the state’s postal abbreviation and for Nashville. The home jerseys in Titans blue read TITANS across the chest with college-style numbers, and the white road jerseys read TENNESSEE, with red outlines on the numbers. A “6-String Stripe” in red on the pants, sleeves and helmets refers to Nashville as Music City, and three navy stars sit in a tab on the back and on the side panels. The AP quoted the team president and chief executive, Burke Nihill, as saying the colour combination tapping into the Oilers’ roots was intentional.

Design and documentation.

A professional football club’s visual identity has to work at very different scales: a mark painted on the side of a helmet, a wordmark stitched across a jersey, a logo printed on a ticket, and signage that spans a stadium façade. Helmet logos in particular are designed to read from a distance and from several angles, so they tend to rely on a single bold silhouette, a limited set of colours and clear outlines that separate the mark from the shell beneath it.

When a club relocates or changes its name, designers face a choice between continuity and a clean break. Some identities carry an existing symbol to a new city and change only the place name in the wordmark; others introduce a new name, a new animal or figure, and a new palette while keeping a link to local history or geography. Regional names, which describe a state or an area rather than one city, are often chosen to widen the audience a team speaks to.

Uniform refreshes usually follow a slower rhythm. Clubs adjust outlines, update typefaces for numbers and names, introduce alternate or throwback jerseys, and refine colour values, often in partnership with the league’s uniform supplier. The guides in this round look at how those decisions show up in each club’s logo, colours and lettering.

A state-animal mascot, an east-bank stadium and the Adams family.

The mascot follows the state theme. Wikipedia says T-Rac, a raccoon, has been the Titans mascot since the team’s first preseason home game as the Titans in August 1999, and that the raccoon is Tennessee’s state animal. The franchise’s Oilers past is honoured in a Ring of Honor that Adams established in 1999 as a Titans/Oilers Hall of Fame, renamed the Oilers/Titans Ring of Honor in 2008.

The east-bank site is about to change. Wikipedia says the Titans play at Nissan Stadium and will move in 2027 to an enclosed stadium that will carry the same name, a timing the AP also linked to the 2026 rebrand.

The Adams family has kept the club. The Handbook of Texas says Bud Adams controlled the team until his death in 2013, after which his children and grandchildren assumed ownership. In its March 2026 report the AP identified Amy Adams Strunk as the owner and quoted her statement that the new look was about honouring the organisation’s history while stepping into its next chapter.

For a design guide, the Tennessee Titans show how a relocated club can rebuild an identity around its new state, trading an oil derrick for the three stars of the Tennessee flag and a classical name for Nashville, then reaching back to the Houston colours when the time came to refresh. Compare a division rival in our Indianapolis Colts brand guidelines, a Houston club with its own era of bright colours in our Houston Astros brand guidelines and the league in our NFL brand guidelines. For this guide we use Titans blue, navy and red with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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