“We can’t win at home. We can’t win on the road…I just can’t figure out where else to play.”
Pat Williams
I grew up in Texas, where football isn’t a pastime—it’s a belief system. You pick a team early, and that’s your moral identity for life.
My problem was that I picked two.
I cheered for the Dallas Cowboys—America’s Team.
The NFL’s golden child. All swagger, no humility. The team that wins the coin toss and acts like it just cured cancer.
And then I cheered for the Houston Oilers—the team you rooted for when you wanted to feel pain. They were heartbreak wrapped in a helmet.
The Oilers could turn a 28-point lead into a documentary about regret. The 1993 playoff collapse against Buffalo wasn’t a loss; it was performance art. You couldn’t even be mad. It was too poetic.
My friend Jerry didn’t agree. Jerry was a Cowboys guy—loud, loyal, confident, and annoyingly right about most things.
One day at lunch, after another Oilers implosion, he said, “Man, the Oilers are a joke. Why waste your time?”
That stung more than I wanted to admit.
Because deep down, I knew he wasn’t wrong.
But also… he was.
Because loyalty, as it turns out, isn’t about being right.
It’s about refusing to quit even when every rational part of you says, you should absolutely quit.
So I drew a line.
I was done playing both sides.
I told Jerry I was all in.
I was an Oilers guy.
It felt dramatic at the time—like I was taking a stand for something bigger than football.
And maybe I was.
Because being an Oilers fan taught me more about life than any championship team ever could. They taught me how to hope against reason. How to laugh after heartbreak. How to keep showing up even when the odds—and Jerry—told me not to.
Eventually, the Oilers left Houston, rebranded, and started over in Tennessee.
And yeah, that hurt.
It felt like being dumped by someone who immediately starts dating Nashville.
But I stayed loyal—to the memory, to the heartbreak, to the lesson.
Because sometimes you don’t pick a team because they win.
You pick them because they teach you how to lose—and how to love something anyway.
And if you can do that, you can handle just about anything.
Except another 28-point lead.
