The
new Texans uniforms “feature a touch of what the team calls ‘H-Town Blue,’” and owner Cal McNair and his wife Hannah -- who also is VP of the Houston Texans Foundation -- “made it clear they wanted to use the color even more prominently,” but were “limited by the NFL and the Tennessee Titans,” according to Matt Young of the HOUSTON CHRONICLE. When former owner Bud Adams moved the Oilers from Houston to Tennessee after the 1996 season, he “took his Oilers intellectual property with him,” including the Columbia Blue. With the Titans “keeping a close eye” on the Texans' redesign process, Hannah McNair “called the end result, ‘Definitely a compromise.’” Cal McNair added, “We worked with the NFL, and there was some push and shove and we came to where we could get to with the NFL, giving us a compromise, sort of a certain percentage in the uniform.” Cal McNair: “I think our fans would like more, and we’re probably in that same boat, but we’re working with the powers that be with the league and all that stuff to get to where we could get.” Hannah McNair said that the team “initially was given permission to use a slightly different color blue more prominently,” but that “changed as news of their plans began to spread around the league.” Hannah McNair: “We discussed that we were going to be able to use a different color than Columbia Blue, so when that was released and we got approval to do that, that’s when we started getting some pushback. And then it got to a point where they just said no you can’t, and then we compromised.” When asked for the reason of the pushback, Hannah “bluntly replied, ‘What do you think?’” (
HOUSTON CHRONICLE, 4/23).
