than planned. Sports career in Tennessee Tennessee Oilers The new Nashville-based stadium's opening was forced back a year, due to the time necessary to get the appropriate enabling measure on the ballot in Nashville. As a result, Adams had difficulty finding a suitable temporary home for the renamed Tennessee Oilers ("Tennessee" was used instead of "Nashville" to appeal to the broader region). The largest stadium in the Nashville area at the time, Vanderbilt Stadium on the campus of Vanderbilt University, seated only 41,000—too small for anything beyond preseason games. Further, the Oilers were concerned that Vanderbilt refused to permit the sale of alcoholic beverages in the college stadium, which are a source of considerable revenue for NFL teams. The closest NFL-sized stadium to Nashville at the time was the University of Tennessee's Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, three hours east of Nashville. However, Adams rejected it because at 102,000 seats, it would have been nearly impossible to sell out. The league and the Oilers decided to use Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium in Memphis, three-and-a-half hours west of Nashville, until the new stadium in Nashville could be completed. The team would be based in Nashville and commute to Memphis for games—essentially saddling the Oilers with 32 road games for the next two years. Even with the team's relocation, Adams himself continued to live in Houston up until his death, only traveling to Tennessee for games. The 1997 season in Memphis proved to be almost as disastrous as the prior years in the Astrodome, largely because the arrangement was very unpopular in both Memphis and Nashville. Whether from disappointment at their city's numerous failures to get professional football in its own right, their longtime rivalry with Nashville, mere lack of interest in professional football in general (the Canadian Football League's Memphis Mad Dogs, who had played in Memphis two years prior, was one of the worst attended teams in that league as well) or general disgust at the prospect of a team that was only there for a temporary stay, Memphians showed no interest in the Oilers. Nashvillians balked at traveling 210 miles to see "their" team, especially since Interstate 40 between the two cities was undergoing a major reconstruction near Memphis. As a result, the Oilers played before some of the smallest NFL crowds since the 1950s. None of the first seven games in Memphis attracted more than 27,000 fans—not even half