Titans quarterback Steve McNair gets a hero's welcome upon the team's return to Nashville.

And now one trip to the Super Bowl.

The Tennessee Titans aren't the unlikeliest of Super Bowl teams in history -- heck, just look at the St. Louis Rams for the answer to that question -- but they certainly took the road less traveled on the way to Atlanta.

"I've prepared for a lot of things over the years," Titans coach Jeff Fisher said after his club beat the Jacksonville Jaguars 33-14 in the AFC Championship Game. "I didn't prepare for this."

Actually, he did. Through the four years of turmoil, when the team re-located from Houston to Tennessee, spending 1997 in Memphis and 1998 playing at Vanderbilt Stadium in Nashville, Fisher has been the constant.

Spend a few moments around his team and you get the feeling he has been the glue that stabilized the franchise until their new stadium in Nashville was completed for this season. Fisher is known for his organizational and preparational skills. His players obviously respect him and buy into his philosophy.

"Coach Fisher did a wonderful job," quarterback Steve McNair said the other day when asked the team's nomadic ways. "He kept the players informed of what was going on. Once we settled in Nashville, we knew a lot of good things would happen. He did a great job of keeping this club together."

The respect is mutual. Fisher appreciates his players sticking with him and believing the team would improve this season after finishing 8-8 the previous three years. When Fisher spoke to his club Saturday night, he mentioned this.

"I told the players how proud the coaching staff was of their effort this year, for their will to win and their ability in dealing with the distractions over the years."

Those distractions began in 1995 when owner Bud Adams -- the only owner in franchise history since it joined the AFL in 1960 as the Houston Oilers -- decided he wanted a new stadium. Houston wouldn't give him one, so, like any good NFL owner these days, he turned to another city for his new palace.

Nashville agreed to build him one, but the team suffered through a final year in Houston, a year in Memphis, where the attendance averaged less than 30,000, and last year at Vanderbilt, where the attendance wasn't much higher.

But Nashville jumped behind the Titans this season, something the players were pleased to see happen. There was even a sizable contingent of Titans fans rooting for them in Jacksonville on Sunday.

"It's great," wide receiver Yancey Thigpen said. "I guess there are about five or six thousand people here despite the fact there were only about 2,000 tickets available to them. But they have been there for us all season, and they really stepped up in the playoffs."

The team also stepped it up to reach Atlanta. Yes, Tennessee needed the Music City Miracle to knock out Buffalo. But the Titans shut down Peyton Manning and the explosive Indianapolis Colts to reach the AFC Championship.

Beating Jacksonville for a third time this season was considered a near-impossible task by many experts, but the Titans forced six turnovers and made the explosive big plays -- the safety in the third quarter, Derrick Mason's 80-yard kickoff return on the ensuing play and McNair's game-clinching 51-yard scramble that set up the final score.

Tennessee in the Super Bowl? Believe. "We like being the underdog," safety Blaine Bishop said.

Bishop said the team was confident it could pull off the sweep of the Jaguars and become the first to do so by winning on the road in the playoffs.

"We felt like we match up well with them," he said. "Once the fourth quarter came and they couldn't score, they knew it was over."

And now the Titans -- the 16-3 Titans, who beat the Rams 24-21 at home Oct. 31 -- are in the Super Bowl. Thigpen, who broke his right foot in the game, provided an experienced voice from the jubilant Titans locker room, having played in the ultimate game with the Steelers.

"I can tell the guys out here are really focused on what they have to do and unlike past Super Bowls, there isn't going to be that one week off to think about it."

That shouldn't be a problem. McNair seems poised and confident, displaying toughness and agility despite back surgery earlier this season and a lingering turf toe injury. The defense has been making all the plays. Eddie George grinds out yards and wears down opponents. All as Fisher planned back when training camp opened in July.

"They set their minds to (reaching the Super Bowl) when training camp started, just like every other team in the NFL did, and then didn't say anything more about it," Fisher said. "That's the most impressive part."

While the Oilers were the first dominant team in the AFL, winning the first two AFL championships, the NFL version of the team had come close only twice before to reaching the Super Bowl, losing the 1979 and 1980 AFC title games at Pittsburgh.

The Houston Oilers never made the Super Bowl. The Tennessee Titans made it in their first season.