In , the regular season was lengthened 16 games, and the exhibition season was cut from six to four games. From 1999 to 2001, when the league consisted of an uneven 31 teams, some additional exhibition games (usually two or three) were played over Hall of Fame weekend. In order to account for the uneven number of teams, each team was required to have a bye week during the exhibition season. Most teams held their bye week in Hall of Fame weekend, while the others utilized them somewhere else during the exhibition season. This practice was abandoned after the Houston Texans were added to the league in 2002, giving it an even 32 teams. Unlike the regular season, the exhibition matchups are not based on any rotating or set formula. The NFL schedules the matchups for all of the exhibition games; since 2002, individual teams have been allowed to negotiate their own deals to play each other during the preseason: the league allows individual teams to provide input into desired matchups and determines the matchups for any games that were not individually negotiated, while the league sets all game dates and times. The exhibition season schedule is released in the spring, shortly before the regular season schedule is announced. The NFL has set a loose precedent of determining exhibition matchups:   The teams that play in the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game are determined solely by the league (and the Hall of Fame committee), featuring one AFC team and one NFC team. Its matchup is announced well in advance, around the time of the Super Bowl, when the Hall of Fame inductees are announced. Under some circumstances, the matchup is planned well into the future. For example, the Buccaneers played the Steelers in the 1998 Hall of Fame Game, a matchup that had been announced in 1983. In recent times, if there has been an expansion team added to the league, that team will be invited to play in the Hall of Fame game (Carolina, Jacksonville, the new Cleveland Browns, and Houston all played in their expansion seasons in 1995, 1999, and 2002 respectively). The 2009 game, however, was between two original American Football League teams: the Buffalo Bills and the Tennessee Titans (formerly the Houston Oilers). This matchup was announced after Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. an AFL founder and the only owner ever of the Bills, was inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame on February 1, 2009. The Titans' owner, Bud Adams, was also the only owner his team has ever had. Wilson and Adams were the two last surviving members of the original AFL ownership cabal and are two of the only three men who have majority-owned a Professional Football franchise continuously for fifty years (the late George Halas, who owned the Chicago Bears from 1920 to 1983, is the third).