Pablo Torre has a Tennessee Titans ownership mystery worth investigating involving the Cherokee Nation and an oil fortune

The Tennessee Titans’ founding family has a complicated history involving Cherokee ancestry, Oklahoma oil wealth, and a 1945 divorce. A viral Instagram reel gets important facts wrong, but a decades-old allegation involving Bud Adams’ parents raises questions that investigative journalist Pablo Torre might find worth pursuing.

The Tennessee Titans are on an all-time cold streak. Tennessee is 12-51 since late-November 2022, a stretch that began with a seven-game losing streak to close the 2022 season and runs through the team’s 0-5 start to this 2026 season. 

That puts the Titans in range of the 2014-17 Cleveland Browns for the worst four-year stretch in NFL history.

The opposite of that? Pablo Torre.

His podcast and staff, Pablo Torre Finds Out, have stacked prestigious awards, including a Pulitzer Prize, and he took home his fifth Edward R. Murrow Award at its gala on Oct. 12. Torre’s investigative run includes his reporting on salary cap circumvention involving Kawhi Leonard and the Los Angeles Clippers, and it has stretched well beyond sports into pop culture and anyone with a scandal worth digging into. If Pablo Torre reaches out, not much good is coming your way.

So, Pablo, I might have something for you to look into. It involves NFL franchise ownership, the Cherokee Nation, an oil fortune, and a 1945 divorce.

The viral Instagram reel about Bud Adams and the Titans

This got tipped off to me by an Instagram reel, of all things. The creator, Tanner Anderson, claimed the origins of Titans founder Bud Adams’ wealth mirror Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in the 2023 film Killers of the Flower Moon.

“Bud Adams, he started the Houston Oilers back in 1959 as a founding member of the AFL at a cost of $25,000. But Adams inherited his wealth from his family, specifically his grandfather, who in the early 1900s married a woman who was a member of the Cherokee Nation. 

Now, since Bud’s grandfather married a woman who was a member of the Cherokee Nation, that meant he was now a member of the Cherokee Nation living in Oklahoma, which allowed him to become the first driller of oil in the state, doing so on Cherokee land. This in turn made Bud Adams’ grandfather insanely rich, to the point he started Phillips Petroleum Company, handing it down to Bud’s father in 1939. 

However, while all this is happening, Bud’s uncle also married a woman who was a member of the Cherokee Nation. In fact, around the same time that Bud’s father inherited the company, Bud’s uncle was named the head of the Cherokee Nation by President Harry Truman, which meant that the family was in cahoots with the U.S. government, so they were able to keep the land and avoid taxes. 

So essentially what I’m saying is the Tennessee Titans were purchased with money made by white people by taking advantage of Native Americans and stealing their land.”

A lot of real history sits around that timeline. The reel still gets plenty wrong and is misleading.

No, the Adams family is not the family depicted in Killers of the Flower Moon. The film centers on the Osage Nation. The Adams family’s ties run through the Cherokee Nation. Both stories take place in Oklahoma, in the early 1900s, and involve oil, but they’re completely different families and different Native nations.

The reel also references the first oil well in Oklahoma, and there’s real history behind that claim. George B. Keeler, an ancestor on Bud’s mother’s side, helped secure the Cherokee Nation lease for the Nellie Johnstone No. 1 well, which became Oklahoma’s first commercially successful oil well in 1897. But Keeler didn’t found Phillips Petroleum, and his role in that early oil discovery doesn’t establish that Cherokee land financed the Houston Oilers.

Yes, Keeler was appointed principal chief in 1949 during Harry Truman’s presidency and later became the first popularly elected Cherokee Nation principal chief in the modern era in 1971. That initial appointment, however, does not establish the reel’s allegation of a government arrangement to retain land or avoid taxes.

Who’s who in the Adams family history

Kenneth Stanley “Bud” Adams Jr. founded the Houston Oilers in 1959, and the franchise played its first game in 1960 before eventually becoming the Tennessee Titans in 1999. Bud was born in 1923 and grew up in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, surrounded by the oil industry.

His father, Kenneth Stanley “Boots” Adams Sr., was a longtime Phillips Petroleum executive who became company president in 1938. He did not found Phillips Petroleum. Nobody from the Adams family did.

Bud’s mother, Blanche Keeler Adams, descended from a prominent Cherokee family in Oklahoma. That’s the key distinction. Bud’s Cherokee ancestry came through his mother, not his father.

Her brother, William Wayne “W.W.” Keeler, became a senior Phillips Petroleum executive and principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. In other words, the Titans’ founding family wasn’t simply tied to Oklahoma’s oil industry. Through Bud’s mother, it was also tied to generations of Cherokee history and leadership.

None of that is new. It came up when Bud founded the franchise, when he moved the Oilers to Tennessee in the mid-1990s, and when they became the Titans.

Decades-old allegation about Bud Adams’ parents raises serious questions

Boots married Blanche in September 1920. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1945.

This is where it gets murky. A 1996 Houston Press article titled “Adams Family Values” recounted an allegation that Boots obtained oil-rich ancestral Native American land belonging to Blanche during their divorce. The article also points to Michael Wallis’s 1988 book Oil Man.

There are some missing pieces in the paper trail. The original divorce decree, the property settlement, and the deeds establishing the alleged transfer have not been obtained or independently verified, as part of this reporting. The viral reel doesn’t provide those records, either. It’s a historical allegation that still needs documentary confirmation.

If property records support it, they could reveal a consequential chapter in the Adams family’s wealth and land ownership. Even then, another question remains: What connection, if any, did that land have to the fortune Bud used to start the Oilers?

How Bud Adams built the oil fortune and funded the Houston Oilers

After World War II, Bud established his petroleum business in Houston in 1946, operating Ada Oil. The NFL’s historical reporting identifies Ada Oil as the source of capital that let Bud enter professional football.

Boots did help. According to that same Houston Press investigation, Boots helped Bud’s company establish a Phillips Petroleum distributorship and allowed Phillips employees to assist Bud’s Houston operation. Bud launched Ada Oil one year after his parents’ divorce and nearly a decade after Boots became the president of Phillips.

But evidence of Boots helping Bud does not establish that any land allegedly acquired from Blanche funded the business. The paper trail would need to connect the land, any income or sale proceeds, Boots’ finances, and Bud’s business capital. All of that is exactly why this story deserves more than a 101-second Instagram video (with multiple errors).

Why the Titans Cherokee Nation history deserves a closer investigation

Back to Pablo Torre. Here are the three unanswered questions:

1. Did Boots acquire Blanche’s Cherokee land or mineral interests in their 1945 divorce

2. What were those properties worth, and what happened to them afterward

3. Can anyone establish a financial connection between those assets and Bud’s petroleum business?

This isn’t simply a question about a billionaire NFL family. It involves Cherokee land ownership, family inheritance, corporate influence, and the historical record. The original divorce and land records may be available through Oklahoma courts and archives, but haven’t been obtained for this report.

Perhaps those records substantiate an allegation that has circulated for decades. Perhaps they show a viral video stitching together pieces of history that don’t belong together. We already know it’s not a Scorsese movie.

Either way, the story of the Titans’ founding family and its ties to the Cherokee Nation deserves more than speculation.

Pablo Torre, consider this one added to your list.