TEXANS OWNER ‘LEFT LASTING MARK’
UNIVERSALLY RESPECTED, HE BROUGHT NFL BACK TO HOUSTON
Texans founder Robert C. McNair, the billionaire energy executive who gave his adopted hometown a new NFL team for a new century, died Friday as the Texans prepared for a prime-time game Monday in the gleaming stadium his dollars and determination helped become reality.
The Texans announced McNair’s death in a statement late Friday afternoon, saying that he “passed away peacefully in Houston with his loving wife, Janice, and his family by his side.”
McNair, 81, had dealt with skin cancer for years and had been undergoing more intensive treatment for that illness and other forms of the disease since 2013. Even while undergoing treatment, he remained a visible part of the team’s daily life until his health worsened this year.
Janice McNair will assume the ownership role of the Texans, and the couple’s son, D. Cal McNair, who holds the titles of chairman and chief operating officer, will be in charge of daily operations.
His death was mourned by players, coaches, executives and public figures who praised
his personal virtues, business acumen and philanthropic contributions that rivaled in scope the hundreds of millions he spent on his football team, while offering gratitude for his role in returning pro football to Houston.
“Bob McNair wasn’t just the brightest Point of Light in Houston; he was one of the kindest and most generous people anywhere,” former President George H.W. Bush said in a statement. “… He was simply The Best.”
“Rest In Peace Mr. McNair,” tweeted J.J. Watt, the Texans’ three-time NFL defensive player of the year. “Thank you for giving myself and so many others an opportunity here in Houston.”
Retired wide receiver Andre Johnson, who along with Watt stands front and center as the team’s greatest players in its 17year history, wrote, “Can’t thank you enough for giving a kid from Miami a chance to live out his dream of playing in the NFL.”
Mayor Sylvester Turner said McNair’s legacy “will include the thrills the Houston Texans give us every season,” and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said McNair “left a lasting mark on his city and our league. … (He) cared deeply about the league and was generous with his time and willingness to share his insights as an exceptional businessman.”
McNair, who had lived in Houston since 1960, spent $700 million in 1998 to purchase the 32nd and, thus far, the last new franchise awarded by the NFL, filling a hole in Houston’s civic psyche left when K.S. “Bud” Adams moved the Oilers to Nashville after the 1996 season.
His record-setting investment in the team, coupled with the publicly funded construction of NRG Stadium, which has hosted two Super Bowls since the Texans’ inaugural season of 2002, heralded a new era of professional football in Houston.
Bringing NFL back to Houston
But while he owned the league’s youngest franchise, McNair became one of the league’s more influential owners, serving as chairman of the finance committee and sometimes becoming a focal point for discussion in the swirling social and political climate that has surrounded the game in recent years.
His death came with his team riding a seven-game win streak entering a Monday night nationally televised game against, by a twist of fate, the Tennessee Titans, the team that once called Houston its home.
Along with the team statement announcement of McNair’s death, Texans president Jamey Rootes described McNair as a “role model as a father, husband, philanthropist and businessman. … He stewarded our franchise with a laser focus on honesty, integrity and high character.”
Coach Bill O’Brien noted in a statement McNair’s care and concern for players and his giving spirit.
“I know how much giving back meant to him, and his loyalty and generosity to the city of Houston and our community will never be forgotten,” the coach added.
McNair’s purchase of the 32nd NFL franchise in 1999 came as a shock to an NFL establishment that expected the team to be awarded to an ownership group in Los Angeles. Owners, in fact, voted overwhelmingly in March 1999 to award the team to Los Angeles if financing could be arranged.
But when nothing emerged from the Los Angeles bidders, owners chose to go with Houston’s rock-solid proposal, supported by public financing through Harris County and the newly formed city-county sports authority, plus support from the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, that guaranteed construction of a world-class, retractableroof stadium,
Owners voted 29-0, with two abstentions, to return pro football to Houston, and the team made its regular-season debut on Sept. 8, 2002, with a 19-10 win over the Dallas Cowboys.
The first game was a sellout, as has been every ensuing Texans game since then as a new generation of Houston sports fans have gravitated to the Texans colors of battle red, liberty white and deep steel blue — still waiting, but hopeful, for an elusive first trip to the Super Bowl.
McNair was a significant fixture in Houston’s business life before he entered professional sports. He was born in Tampa, Fla., and grew up as part of a lower-middle class family in western North Carolina during the Depression, which led to some interesting trips as he hitchhiked his way to school, as he described in a 2012 interview with the Chronicle.
“I got picked up sometimes by bootleggers who had moonshine whiskey in the back seat and they’d say, ‘Boy, get in there and sit on those cases,’?” McNair said.
He graduated in 1958 from the University of South Carolina, where he met his wife, Janice Suber McNair. The couple was married on April 18, 1957, and moved to Houston in 1960 with modest expectations.
“I was just hoping I could provide a decent living for my family, and I thought middle-class life looked pretty good to me,” McNair said in 2012. “I didn’t have any problem with that. I just hoped I could make enough money to have a nice home for my family and send my kids to college.”
McNair worked in auto leasing, trucking and telecommunications before in 1982 founding Cogen Technologies, which owned electrical cogeneration plants that harness heat for thermal energy along with generating electricity. He sold the company for $1.5 billion to Enron in 1999 as he was in the midst of his successful campaign for the NFL franchise.
His admirers for his business acumen along with his role as a sports owner included James Baker III, the former secretary of state.
“Bob lived his life according to the Golden Rule and always strove to see the best in others,” Baker said. “Most of all, the generosity toward good works and the less fortunate that he and Janice displayed time and time again provides a blueprint for helping us all build a better world.”
Along with his role with the NFL, McNair also was a successful thoroughbred horse breeder, owner of Stonerside Stable in Paris, Ky. Stonerside horses won 72 graded stakes races and was cobreeder of Fusaichi Pegasus, winner of the 2000 Kentucky Derby.
Philanthropy, controversy
His philanthropic efforts also redounded into the hundreds of millions of dollars to scientific, literary, educational and faithbased organizations through the Robert and Janice McNair Foundation, Houston Texans Foundation and the Robert and Janice McNair Educational Foundation. Those efforts included $100 million to help build the Baylor College of Medicine campus named in the couple’s honor.
Along with his role with the Texans, McNair was senior chairman of McNair Interests and owned two private investment firms He was a member of the Texas Business Hall of Fame and Houston Hall of Fame and in 2010 received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from his alma mater, the University of South Carolina.
While McNair’s public face of the Texans and its role in the NFL reflected his thoughtful, soft-spoken nature, he courted controversy in 2017, when, amid a players protests of civil rights inequities during the National Anthem, it was reported that he said, “We can’t have the inmates running the prison.”
McNair apologized and said his reference was to the league office in New York, not to the players. He later told The Wall Street Journal that he regretted the apology, saying, “I really didn’t have anything to apologize for.”
His most recent public gesture, however, involved the ongoing mixture of public service, social justice and philanthropy that was characteristic of his life.
The McNairs’ foundation in July donated $1 million toward a memorial honoring nine members of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., who were shot to death in 2015.
Also, McNair, in one of his final public appearances this summer, joined six Texans players with ties to South Carolina in visiting the Mother Emanuel church to meet with parishioners. The McNairs also paid for funeral arrangements for the nine shooting victims in 2015.
McNair has dealt with skin cancer for more than 20 years and was diagnosed 10 years ago with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a type of cancer of the blood that affects the immune system. He began a more intense round of treatment in 2013 after undergoing surgery to treat Squamous cell carcinoma, a non-melanoma skin cancer.
In 2014, in an interview with the Chronicle that included his first public comments on his treatment regimen at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, he encouraged others not to consider cancer a death sentence.
“If they get treatment early and listen to their doctor and follow their advice, they can get the same results and be cured,” he said. “Don’t be discouraged. Attack it. It’s not going to be pleasant, but the battle can be won.”
In the years after that interview, the Texans twice made the playoffs, and, after a 4-12 finish in 2017, are on the upswing this year, a season that will continue in the wake of their founder’s death.
In bringing pro football back to Houston, McNair “gave us a win streak that will never end,” said CBS Sports announcer Jim Nantz, a friend of the McNair family. “He gave our city one of the greatest gifts of all time. It took a man of his integrity to return the NFL to Houston.”
McNair is survived by his wife, Janice, sons Cal and Cary, daughters Ruth and Melissa, 15 grandchildren and two great-grandsons.