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Titanmania! Tennessee going crazy over success of Titans
Posted: Monday January 17, 2000 10:06 PM
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Coach Jeff Fisher always said that winning would bring the fans. Not even he could have pictured the response the Tennessee Titans are getting now. Everywhere the Titans go these days, fans are dressed up in red and blue, faces painted and screaming their lungs out. The fireball logo has sprouted up all over Music City like mushrooms, and merchandise is flying off store shelves. When the Titans (15-3) returned Sunday night from their 19-16 victory over the Indianapolis Colts and with their first berth in the AFC championship game since 1979 when Houston was home, up to 9,000 people met them at the airport. "It was incredible," said running back Eddie George, who remembers the days when two fans constituted a crowd in Houston. "It was like we were the Beatles or something. All the fans out there, every level packed way back from one side of the airport to the other. People outside the windows. It was an excellent reception. It was something we longed for." Airport police were overwhelmed by the crowd and wound up letting fans leave without paying to park. One woman was injured when she fell off an escalator and hit her head. Remember that this is a team that has been ignored while going 8-8 the past three seasons, playing in a different stadium every year with an Oilers nickname that few in Tennessee liked or wanted. Safety Marcus Robertson pointed out that it felt like there were more fans at the airport than attended games in Memphis during the 1997 season. The then-Oilers drew a league-low 28,095 to the Liberty Bowl 200 miles away from Nashville. Thanks to a franchise-record season, the fans are coming out of the woodwork. One local television station counted down the days to Sunday's kickoff on its cable channel. People then gave the Titans a rousing sendoff at the airport on Saturday, greeted them at their hotel in Indianapolis and scrounged up a few thousand tickets to the RCA Dome for Sunday's game where they forced the Colts to deal with crowd noise. "We had Peyton Manning and them going on a silent count," Robertson said. "Our fans made a big difference." Fisher discussed the fan reaction with the Titans Monday morning, but he isn't worried about his players being distracted by the attention that has slowly built since the season opener. If anything, the Titans are feeding off the support. "No one would've thought we would be where we are right now, let alone that we would've gotten the support we've gotten. It shows an awful lot for the relationship between this organization, the players and the fans," Fisher said. Now the Titans are curious to see if their fans can wiggle their way into Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville for Sunday's championship with the Jaguars (15-2). Direct flights from Nashville to Jacksonville had sold out as of Monday morning, and how to get tickets was the biggest question. Fisher had preached patience, promising that winning games would fill the empty seats. The players say they never doubted Fisher even though they sometimes heard fans talking amongst themselves in Memphis. But nobody expected what is happening now. "This has exploded for some odd reason. I guess people are excited about it. I said a long time ago that as soon as we start winning people will start getting excited, and this is incredible," George said.
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