January 9, 2026
What one Texans superfan reveals about Houston, hope and loving a team that rarely wins
The first time Steve Beckholt showed up to a Texans game dressed like that, it wasn't part of a grand plan.
It was 2007, and Houston was playing the New Orleans Saints at home. Beckholt had spent the previous day at Six Flags in San Antonio, had a few drinks, and came home buzzing with the kind of nervous energy only the sport could conjure in a native of the Midwest, the cradle of professional football. On a whim, he grabbed his son's Superman cape that Sunday, tied on a bandana, pulled on bright red shorts and jokingly told his wife that this was how he planned to go to the game.
She laughed, even daring him to do it.
"If you go to the game dressed like that," she told him, "I'll buy you season tickets."
So he did, and the Texans won that Week 11 matchup 23-10. And in a moment that felt insignificant at the time, one of the most recognizable fan personas in Houston sports was born.
Nearly two decades later, Beckholt — now 50, sporting a Viking's beard and two Texans tattoos along with the other artwork up and down his brawny arms — proudly calls himself the "Ultimate Fan," a nod to the Ultimate Warrior of pro wrestling fame (but doesn't he also kind of look like Hulk Hogan?). In 2023, Beckholt was even named the Texans fan of the year for his game-day outfits, which draw as much attention as the action on the field.
But the Ultimate Fan, like the rest of the Houston Texans fandom, finds himself nowin unfamiliar emotional territory.
The Texans are back in the playoffs for the third straight year, riding the momentum of a nine-game winning streak that feels like miracle work to the oft-disappointed Houston football fan. Can you believe that? The Texans are actually good! And maybe, just maybe, they are finally good enough to win more than just one playoff game and make a deep postseason run.
"It's a long time coming," Beckholt said. "This is a moment fans have been waiting for for a long time."
That unfamiliar feeling carries extra weight because, like so many people in this city, his loyalty was chosen, not inherited.
Beckholt moved to Houston in 1997, after the Oilers left but before the Texans existed. He came from Ohio, one of the few places in the country that has suffered far more than us, in terms of playoff letdowns and droughts. Could you imagine being condemned to Browns or Bengals fandom for life?
Ironically, he grew up a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the very team Houston is facing this coming Monday.
When the Texans arrived in 2002, Beckholt was curious but not converted. He liked football, liked the idea of having a local team again and liked that Houston was building something from scratch. At first, he went to Texans games more for the novelty than out of devotion.
What converted him wasn't instant success (because there wasn't much of that to be found) but proximity and persistence. Going to games became part of his routine, and over time, rooting for the Texans in the city he now called home felt right. The costume came later, but the commitment came first.
When he finally cut ties with his old fandom, he did it cleanly, fully aware that the Texans offered far more frustration than certainty. Loyalty, in Houston football terms, has almost always required virtuous patience.
For years, being the Ultimate Fan meant carrying optimism through losing seasons and half-built hopes. It meant celebrating draft picks that turned out to be busts, new coaches that were quickly fired and fresh starts that rarely lasted long. The persona didn't soften the losses, but Beckholt kept showing up anyway.
That's why this stretch feels so strange — and so loaded.
This Texans team doesn't feel fragile, primed to collapse when it means most. It feels organized, confident and capable of sustaining success instead of briefly flirting with it.
For a fan base traumatized by mid-season and mid-game calamities, that shift is almost disorienting.
"I always felt like we were missing that something," Bekcholt said. He reminisced on the disappointing end to the 2012 season, the year J.J. Watt won defensive player of the year. And who could forget that straight-up absurd playoffs loss to the Chiefs in 2020?
The missing piece, Beckholt said upon further reflection, was leadership.
"DeMeco Ryans was the key that brought us swagger and confidence," he said. "He built the best defense in the NFL."
So while Beckholt's nerves are undoubtedly real, so is his pride. He's watched the franchise grow from an expansion concept into something legitimate, and he's done it in public, game after game, year after year.
Houston has always been a "next-time" city, practiced at hope and fluent in rebuilding. We see it when hurricanes tear through town and those in charge tell us that we'll be better prepared when more wicked weather barrels through. Or when the boom gives way to another bust and we convince ourselves that the next cycle will be the one that finally sticks.
Beckholt fits that mold as a transplant who chose this team and approaches his in-your-face loyalty to it with the discipline of a diehard, despite the grief it brings.
Now that the Texans are at the top of their game, the sense that that loyalty might finally be met with something lasting is both exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure. But that's just another Monday in Houston, right?
 | Jhair Romero, Houston Explained Host |
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