The Tennessee Titans are a professional American football team based in Nashville, Tennessee. The team was originally founded in 1960 as the Houston Oilers and moved to Tennessee in 1997. The team’s name was changed to the Tennessee Titans in 1999, inspired by the full-scale replica of the Parthenon in Nashville.
The Tennessee Titans have a special place in the NFL as the only team inspired by Greek mythology. Although you could argue the New York Giants are also from Greek mythology because the English word Giant comes from the Greek word Gigantes, the NY Giants do not mention Greek mythology in their history, while the Tennessee Titans do.
The Titans are named after the Titans of Greek mythology, which were a race of powerful elemental deities of great size that ruled during the legendary Golden Age in Greek mythology. The Titans were the former gods: the generation of gods preceding the Olympians. They were overthrown as part of the Greek succession myth, which tells how Cronus seized power from his father Uranus and ruled the cosmos with his fellow Titans before being in turn defeated and replaced as the ruling pantheon of gods by Zeus and the Olympians in a ten-year war called “the Titanomachy”.
The Titans play a key role in an important part of Greek mythology, the succession myth. It told how the Titan Cronus, the youngest of the Titans, overthrew Uranus, and how in turn Zeus, by waging and winning a great ten-year war pitting the new gods against the old gods, called the Titanomachy (“Titan war”), overthrew Cronus and his fellow Titans.
The Titans are often depicted as being of great size and strength, and as such, the name is fitting for a professional football team. The Titans’ logo features a sword, which is a nod to the team’s Greek mythology roots. The team’s colors are navy blue, Titans blue, red, and silver.
In 2020 the Titans reached the AFC Championship game for the first time since 2002 but lost to the eventual Super Bowl Champions the Kansas City Chiefs.
Watch some videos below to learn more about the Titans and how the full-scale replica of the Parthenon in Nashville inspired their name and uniform design. You can also visit the Titans on their social media below.
