Vintage 1997 Tennessee Oilers NFL Helmet Keychain NOS Tag Express 🏈

Size: about 2 1/2" x 2 1/4" ~ Sealed and unused, new old stock — you'd be the first to open it if you ever clipped it on. They vary a little one to the next.

🏈 The Team Name Tennessee Wanted Gone

For exactly two NFL seasons, 1997 and 1998, there was a football team called the Tennessee Oilers. It lived in Nashville, played its first year of home games clear across the state in Memphis, and spent both seasons hearing its new fans ask for a different name. Then it became the Titans and the name disappeared. This Tennessee Oilers helmet keychain by Tag Express is a piece of those two in-between seasons, new old stock and still sealed in its original package.

What You Are Holding

A die-cut rubber keychain shaped like a football helmet: a white shell, the blue oil-derrick logo outlined in red, a red facemask, a red, white and blue stripe over the crown, and TENNESSEE in blue letters outlined in red across a black base. It measures about 2 1/2" x 2 1/4" and hangs from a short metal chain and split ring. The back of the rubber is plain black with a small round holographic sticker.

The helmet is drawn the way the franchise really wore it. The Oilers played in white helmets with the derrick and red facemasks from 1981 through 1998, the same look the Titans pulled back out of the closet as a throwback in 2023.

It rides on its original printed paper header card: TAG EXPRESS / SPORT KEY CHAINS / Laser Engraved • Durable Rubber, a row of licensing seals, and the line Licensed Lifestyles by Tag Express • Duluth, GA 30136. The seals run NFL (officially licensed product), a collegiate products seal, NBA, MLS, the University of Notre Dame, NHL, Major League Baseball "Genuine Merchandise" and a red Collegiate Licensed Product tag. The back of the card carries a bar code label reading TENOILERS and the words Made in China.

Duluth, Georgia, printed right there on the card, has its own small joke of a history: it started out as Howell's Crossing, and was renamed Duluth in 1871 when a rail line came through, poking fun at a Congressman's famous speech mocking the idea of a railroad all the way to Duluth, Minnesota. Local telling has it that Evan P. Howell — the crossing's namesake — suggested the joke name himself.

The Card Tells You When It Was Printed For

Look at the fourth seal on the card. Major League Soccer, the youngest league in that row, played its very first match on April 6, 1996, when the San Jose Clash beat D.C. United 1-0 at Spartan Stadium on an 88th-minute Eric Wynalda goal in front of 31,683 people. Put that seal next to a helmet reading TENNESSEE under an Oilers derrick, and there are only two NFL seasons this keychain can belong to.

🛢️ An Oilman's Logo

The derrick is older than the team's time in Tennessee by almost four decades. Kenneth Stanley "Bud" Adams Jr. was born in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, on January 3, 1923, the son of Phillips Petroleum's president, and made his own money in Houston with Ada Oil Company. In 1959 Adams and Dallas oil heir Lamar Hunt got the American Football League off the ground. Its eight founding owners were nicknamed the "Foolish Club" for daring to take on the NFL. Adams named his team the Oilers, chose an oil derrick for the helmet, and won the first two AFL championships, in 1960 and 1961, with George Blanda at quarterback and Billy Cannon at halfback.

Luv Ya Blue: The Legend Houston Kept

Ask anyone from Houston of a certain age and the story comes out. On November 20, 1978, for a Monday Night Football game against the Miami Dolphins, the Oilers' publicity office under PR director Jack Cherry handed out blue and white pompoms. The Oilers won 35-30 with rookie Earl Campbell in the backfield, more than 50,000 fans waved blue, and "Luv Ya Blue" was born.

Houston lost back-to-back AFC Championship games to the Pittsburgh Steelers, the second one 27-13 in January 1980. A season-ending loss usually empties a city. Instead, an estimated 50,000 people were waiting at the Astrodome when the team got home, and coach Bum Phillips gave them the line Houston still quotes: "One year ago, we knocked on the door. This year, we beat on the door. Next year, we're going to kick the son of a b---- in." Next year never came. After a 27-7 wild card loss on December 31, 1980, Phillips was fired amid disagreements with Adams.

Why Houston Lost Its Oilers

Adams came to see the Astrodome as outmoded and wanted public financing for a new downtown stadium. Houston would not pay for it. On November 16, 1995, in the middle of that season, Adams announced the franchise was leaving for Tennessee, and fan support in Houston collapsed through a lame-duck 1996.

1997: A Home Team That Never Played at Home

The new stadium in Nashville would not be ready until 1999. So the Tennessee Oilers were based in Nashville and played their 1997 home games at Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium in Memphis, an arrangement that amounted to 32 road games in two years. They opened on August 31, 1997, beating the Oakland Raiders 24-21 in overtime while Eddie George ran for 216 yards on 35 carries.

Memphis stayed home anyway. None of the first seven home games drew more than 27,000, and two drew fewer than 18,000. The finale against Pittsburgh finally packed the Liberty Bowl with 50,677, and by one estimate at least three-fourths of them were Steelers fans in black and gold. The team finished 8-8, with a 27-14 Thanksgiving Day win over the Dallas Cowboys along the way, and the embarrassment ended any plan to stay in Memphis.

1998: Nashville, and a State Asking for a New Name

The NFL granted a special exemption for one season at Vanderbilt Stadium, capacity 41,000. The team went 8-8 again. The football was fine. The name was the problem. A Kingsport Times-News editorial put it plainly: "Tennessee got slickered by Houston Oilers owner."

November 14, 1998: The Oilers Become the Titans

Adams gave in. The franchise kept its 39-year history, including the team records and the rights to the Oilers name, and took on a new identity. A naming contest had floated Tornadoes, Copperheads, South Stars and Wranglers. On November 14, 1998, Adams announced the Titans, a nod to Nashville's old nickname, "the Athens of the South." The day after, fan Gary Puckett said plainly what a lot of Tennesseans were thinking: "I wasn't going to support the Tennessee team until it got a new name." New logos and colors debuted on December 22, 1998, and the Tennessee Oilers were finished.

The Legacy: The Tackle, and the Derrick's Return

The first Titans season became its own legend. In the wild card round against Buffalo, tight end Frank Wycheck lateraled a kickoff to Kevin Dyson, who ran it back 75 yards for the winning touchdown with 16 seconds left: the Music City Miracle. In Super Bowl XXXIV, Dyson was tackled one yard short of the end zone as time expired, and the St. Louis Rams won 23-16. Houston eventually got the expansion Texans, who became division rivals of the team that left. Steve McNair's No. 9 and Eddie George's No. 27 were retired on September 15, 2019.

And the derrick came back. The Titans wore Oilers throwbacks, derrick helmets and all, with "Luv Ya Blue" at the neckline, against Atlanta on October 29, 2023 and Houston on December 17, 2023, and again against the Texans on January 5, 2025. The Tennessee Oilers themselves never got a throwback of their own. They survive in things like this keychain, made for a name that lasted 32 games.

For fans who remember Steve McNair, Eddie George and the move from Houston to Tennessee, this little keychain carries a team name most people have forgotten. Free shipping in the USA 🚚