The Memphis Disaster of the 1997 Tennessee Oilers (A Lesson on What Not to Do When Relocating a Team)

In 1999, the Tennessee Titans had a dream season. Playing their first season at Nashville in their brand new stadium, the Adelphia Coliseum, the Titans ended up finishing 13-3, making it to Super Bowl XXXIV and nearly pulling off the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history. Perhaps the most impressive thing about Tennessee's success in 1999 was how they recovered from being in absolute shambles in 1997 and 1998, especially with regards to off the field. This is a lesson on how to relocate a team, and do everything wrong in the process.

• June 1997: Oilers complete last mini camp at Houston. Wait a second... didn't the Tennessee Oilers play in Tennessee in 1997? Yes. However, the deal wasn't officially finalized for the Oilers to exit their stadium lease from the Astrodome until after mini camp. Basically, the Oilers started the 1997 offseason in Houston.

When the Oilers finally did move to Tennessee that summer, they signed an agreement to play games at the Liberty Bowl in Memphis while their stadium in Nashville was being built. Memphis... as in, a city 200 miles away from Nashville. To put that in perspective, imagine if the New York Jets played their games in Baltimore. Not many fans of the team in Nashville went to watch the Oilers play in Memphis because of the trek. In fact, in 1997, only 4,000 season tickets were bought by people from Nashville. To make matters worse, the Titans did not have a HQ in Memphis, so the team had to travel to every single game.

What about the fans in Memphis? The city that nearly got an expansion franchise in 1976 when the Memphis Grizzlies of the WFL fought to get into the league, and the city that nearly got an expansion team in 1993 with the Memphis Hound Dogs? Turns out, they gave the Oilers the cold shoulder. Knowing that the team was going to move to Nashville in 2 years and that the city was going to lose the team, once again, Memphis felt used by the NFL. In a matter of one season, Bud Adams alienated both his Nashville fanbase and his Memphis fanbase. It also didn't help that the Oilers had the second highest increase in ticket prices.

The end result? It's Opening Day of 1997, and the Oilers are taking on the Oakland Raiders at the Liberty Bowl. There are projected crowds of a sellout, or at least 50,000. The 60,000 seat Liberty Bowl is expected to be packed for Opening Day. Good news for Tennessee fans- the Oilers won 24-21. The bad news? The attendance was 30,171. Not even the Arizona Cardinals, who were playing at Sun Devil Stadium and had horrific attendances before getting their own stadium in the mid 2000s, drew that low. Keep in mind, this is opening day of the inaugural season. It can only go downhill from here. I was also able to (I think) find a picture from that game. Look how empty the Liberty Bowl looks here.

• September 1997: Tennessee Oilers Stuck in a State of Apathy

Game 2 at the Liberty Bowl is against the Baltimore Ravens in Week 4. Attendance was even worse. The Oilers drew 17,737 fans. For some perspective, if the Oilers averaged that for an entire season, that would put them in the bottom half of attendance of NBA teams. It didn't help that the Oilers started the season 1-4 in their first 5 games, but still- nobody was showing up to the games or supporting Bud Adams. The next 2 games after that: 17,071 vs. Cincinnati and 31,042 vs. Washington. By this point, everyone knew how bad of a disaster this experiment was, and more articles started coming out bashing Bud Adams. Here's everything I could find from 10/1997:

• The Adams Chronicles: Why Bud Keeps Screwing Up

• Memphis Isn't Warm to Oilers

• Oilers Fail to Fire Up Memphis

• Memphis Struggle With NFL Has A History Of Two Decades

The rest of the season was no better for the Oilers. Attendances for the next 4 games were all in the 20K range, with the exception of the finale against Pittsburgh, which drew 50K (but for obvious reasons, since everyone knows how well Pittsburgh fans travel). This is a video from a 1997 game against the New York Giants, which drew about 26K. Notice the empty gaps. By the end of the season, it got so bad that the NFL hired people to help market the Oilers.

Even worse (and something that would be unheard of today), the Tennessee Oilers didn't play the 1998 season in the Liberty Bowl, because they were forced out due to poor attendance. Average attendance in 1997 was 28,027, which is significantly inflated from the Pittsburgh game, which drew almost double that amount. They wound up playing the 1998 season at the 40,000 seat Vanderbilt Stadium... a stadium which Bud Adams refused to play at in 1997 because it was too small (so much for that). Obviously, things turned around for the team when they finally adopted a different name (since Oilers doesn't have anything to do with Tennessee) and moved into their own stadium, but the 1997 season in particular was a disaster, and a lesson on what not to do when relocating a team.

Note that I got all my information from articles using the Google search filter. If anyone has any other information that I either left out, or has any personal experiences from this, then by all means, I'd love to hear it. I'm fascinated by this stuff and enjoy researching some of the long lost NFL stories regarding expansion and attendance (especially during the offseason).