The Tennessee Titans unveiled new uniforms this offseason with a gorgeous light blue dominated color palette, and Texans fans are furious about it. Again. It is 2026, and we are still having the Houston Oilers ownership conversation. The delusion from the city of Houston seemingly will never end, but the NFL is stoking the fire in a way that I honestly can’t help but love.

The Titans’ new look leans into their identity as the Titans since moving to Tennessee while blending it with what they were and have been as a franchise dating all the way back to their time as the Oilers in Houston. And that Columbia Blue colorway is what continues to drive Texans fans up the wall, because for years they have claimed that the Adams family, which owns the Titans, which as a franchise is the Houston Oilers, doesn’t have any claim to the Oilers throwback merch or their colorways. That’s simply untrue. It is untrue legally. It is untrue logically. It is untrue historically. It’s delusional cope.

The NFL Rivalry uniforms add fuel to the fire

The NFL has a new rivalry uniform series making its way around the league over the next four years. One division in each conference gets its rivalry year, and the AFC South is the AFC division getting theirs in 2026. The Titans, Texans, Jaguars, and Colts will all have a special rivalry alternate uniform they wear on their rivalry night at some point this season. They were cool last year when the league did them for the first time, and Titans fans are eagerly awaiting the expected late summer drop of what the design will look like. Tennessee will wear it just once this year, and then it technically becomes an alternate jersey available for future use, though they don’t have to ever choose to wear it again.

This is a Nike initiative, since they handle the jerseys. And because Nike is also a shoe company, they released a set of Nike Air Max 90 NFL Rivalry version shoes to accompany the rivalry jerseys set to drop later this year. The entire AFC South version came out this week, with the Titans and Colts versions arriving first. The Titans shoe is largely light blue but also leans into white, black, and navy, with an omission of the new red the team emphasized in their primary uniforms.

The expectation all along has been that with how light the Titans went on the new primary jersey, the rivalry version will probably be some darker variation, kind of like a midnight situation. No confirmation of that, but that’s the vibe. And the way the shoe looks, I think it would accompany that pretty well.

The Texans shoe is where it gets fun

Here’s what makes this whole thing entertaining. The Texans version of the shoe features a blue that Nike is calling “Italy Blue” in terms of the official colorway online. But it’s clearly an allusion to their H-Town Blue, the color Houston is looking to integrate into its rivalry uniforms. Now, last year’s matching shoes and rivalry jerseys didn’t perfectly reflect the colorways of the actual uniforms, so it’s not a sure thing that any of these shoes are a straight sneak peek at what the jerseys will look like. But it’s a pretty decent guess. And with how much blue is in the Texans shoe, it is impossible to think they won’t have some of that “Italy Blue” (a cheap veil for H-Town Blue) in the uniform.

I think this is a perfect way for the NFL to allow the city of Houston to continue fanning the flame of this one-sided argument they continue to yell basically to each other about, because Titans fans already know what the reality of the situation is. Texans fans are still delusional about it. It seems they’ll always be delusional about it.

And if they want to cope with these rivalry uniforms by having that little touch of blue, just a taste of the thing they can’t actually have in their lives, to continue to be angry about it and maybe to get their fix, then that’s a perfect way for them to publicly (and I think embarrassingly) cope over the fact that they lost something that no longer belongs to them.

So bravo to Nike and bravo to the NFL for the way they’ve handled this. I loathe the day we have to redo this conversation all over again, as we do every single year, about who actually owns the colorways and who it should belong to. But that day will come, because it always does.