Texans set to honour their late owner McNair
HOUSTON — When the Houston Texans take the field on Monday night against the Tennessee Titans in their first game since Robert “Bob” McNair died on Friday they’ll all carry a reminder of the team’s late owner and founder.
Affixed to the back of each player’s helmet as they try to set a franchise record with their eighth straight win will be a small decal in the shape of a football with simple white block letters bearing his initials of “RCM.”
One of the National Football League’s most influential owners, McNair had battled both leukemia and squamous cell carcinoma in recent years before dying in Houston on Friday. He was 81. The team did not release a cause of death, but said he died peacefully with wife Janice and his family by his side. The North Carolina native had worked in the energy field, real estate and in recent years had begun the biotechnology investment firm, Cogene Biotech Ventures.
While McNair hadn’t been around the team much this season as his health declined, he’d been a near constant presence in years past. He was often seen sitting on a golf cart watching his team practice or standing on the field before games.
On Saturday before the Texans started practice, coach Bill O’Brien discussed McNair’s fight with cancer and his passing with the team.
“He loved the Houston Texans and he loved coming out here to practice and he loved ...
“the veterans will tell you, the guys that have been here a long time, sitting in his cart with (son) Cal (McNair) watching practice, driving around to the different drills,” O’Brien said on a video provided by the team.
“And I just think on a day like this before we hit the field — this is his field — (we’ll) have a little moment of silence and then we break and we’ll go to practice. Because at the end of the day, guys, Bob McNair wanted us to win.”
After games McNair, who dressed impeccably in a suit to watch the team play, would often emerge from the locker-room to address the assembled media, beaming and raving about the Texans after big wins or lamenting that they had to do better after tough losses.
This team wasn’t merely a business to McNair, he cared deeply about the Texans and talked often about his desire to bring Houston its first Super Bowl title.
The Houston Oilers never won one before skipping town for Tennessee after the 1996 season. It was then that McNair made it his mission to return the NFL to the city.
He formed Houston NFL Holdings in 1998, and on Oct. 6, 1999, he was awarded the 32nd NFL franchise. The Texans began play in 2002.
And whether near or afar McNair had been a presence in all 266 games the Texans had played since their inaugural game on Sept. 8, 2002, when they beat the Cowboys 19-10.
Quarterback David Carr, whom the Texans chose with their first draft pick and who led them to that win, recounted McNair’s kindness and knows better than most just how desperately he wanted to win a Super Bowl.
“That was really the only regret after I left Houston was that I wasn’t able to bring a championship home for him and Janice because they definitely deserved it just because of what all they did to bring football back to Houston,” Carr said on NFL Network.
Now the Texans will continue that quest without McNair, under the guidance of Cal McNair, who will take over in the wake of his father’s death.