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Houston Roughnecks (2020)

The Houston Roughnecks were a professional American football team based in Houston, Texas. The Roughnecks competed in the XFL football league. The team was founded by Vince McMahon’s Alpha Entertainment and were an owned-and-operated by Dwayne Johnson’s Alpha Acquico. The Roughnecks played their home games at TDECU Stadium. The Roughnecks had a franchise regular season record of 12-3 (.800), the highest win percentage among all XFL teams (tied with DC Defenders).

Following the merger of the USFL and XFL in 2024 as the United Football League, the Roughnecks branding was transferred to the former Houston Gamblers, which had competed in the USFL in 2022 and 2023 as a traveling team.

History

McMahon Era (2020)

On December 5, 2018, Houston was announced as one of eight cities that would join the newly reformed XFL, as well as Seattle, St. Louis, Los Angeles, New York, DC, Tampa Bay, and Dallas. On May 13, 2019, June Jones left his position with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats to become Houston's head coach. The XFL confirmed the hire May 20.

On October 15, 2019, the Roughnecks announced their first player in team history, being assigned former Temple Owls QB P. J. Walker.

On February 8, 2020, the Roughnecks defeated the Los Angeles Wildcats in the second game in league history by a score of 37–17. The XFL announced that the remainder of the 2020 XFL season had been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The team finished with an undefeated regular season 5–0 record. On April 10, 2020, the XFL suspended operations, with all employees, players, and staff being terminated.

Dwayne Johnson and Dany Garcia Era (2023)

On August 3, 2020, it was reported that a consortium led by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Dany Garcia, and Gerry Cardinale (through Cardinale's fund RedBird Capital Partners) purchased the XFL for $15 million just hours before an auction could take place; the purchase received court approval on August 7, 2020. The XFL hired Wade Phillips as a head coach on April 13, 2022, with the expectation that he would be coaching the Houston team. On July 24, 2022, the return of a Houston XFL franchise was confirmed, as well as the hiring of Wade Phillips. On October 31, 2022, the XFL officially announced that the Roughnecks name would be returning, with a new logo.

Logo change

On January 8, 2021, it was revealed that the NFL filed an opposition against the XFL's trademark application for the Houston Roughnecks logo on December 28, 2020, claiming that the logo was too similar to the Houston Oilers logo. It was then later revealed that the NFL filed another trademark opposition to the Roughneck's secondary logo on behalf of the New England Patriots, claiming that the secondary logo was too similar to the Patriots' current logo. On April 7, 2021, it was revealed that the two logos were abandoned "with prejudice" which means that new applications for the logos could not be made.

The Roughnecks revealed their new logo on October 31, 2022, which is similar in shape to the previous derrick logo but with greater emphasis on the H (stylized to appear as if constructed from steel girders) and the star portion lowered so that the logo no longer explicitly resembles a derrick.

Merger with the Houston Gamblers

The Roughnecks released a large portion of its roster ahead of the 2024 season and reassigned Phillips and his staff to the San Antonio Brahmas. At the same time, the United States Football League, ahead of its planned merger with the XFL for 2024, indicated that its putative Houston team, the Gamblers (which never played in Houston during its two years in that league), would be one of the four surviving teams in said merger in a notice to its players union. With the announcement of the merger on December 31, The Washington Post reported that the merged league's Houston team would take on the Roughnecks identity. The UFL confirmed this on January 1, 2024.