Eddie George says the Titans felt like "The Beatles" upon returning from Indianapolis.

"It was like we were The Beatles or something," said running back Eddie George, who remembers when two fans constituted a crowd in Houston.

"People outside the windows. It was an excellent reception. It was something we longed for."

Fan support that harkens back to the "Luv Ya Blue" heyday of the Houston Oilers was only a dream when the team first moved to Tennessee in 1997. But coach Jeff Fisher promised his players that people who loved football would notice them once they started winning.

He never could have imagined this.

Everywhere the Titans go these days, fans are dressed up in red and blue, faces painted and screaming their lungs out. The fireball logos have sprouted up all over Music City like mushrooms, and merchandise is flying off store shelves.

When the Titans (15-3) returned Sunday night from their 19-16 victory over the Indianapolis Colts with their first berth in the AFC Championship Game since 1979, when Houston was home, as many as 9,000 people met them at the airport.

The crowd caught airport police unprepared, and they let people leave without paying to park to clear fans out of the way.

A local television station used an on-screen counter on its cable channel to count down the hours until Sunday's kickoff. People then gave the Titans a rousing sendoff at the airport on Saturday, greeted them at their hotel in Indianapolis and scrounged up a few thousand tickets to the RCA Dome for Sunday's game where they forced the Colts to deal with crowd noise.

"We had Peyton Manning and them going on a silent count," safety Marcus Robertson said. "Our fans made a big difference."

Remember that this is a team that has been ignored while going 8-8 the past three seasons, playing in a different stadium every year with an Oilers nickname that few in Tennessee liked or wanted.

Robertson pointed out that it felt like there were more fans at the airport than attended games in Memphis during the 1997 season. The then-Oilers drew a league-low 28,095 to the Liberty Bowl 200 miles away from Nashville.

Fisher discussed the fan reaction with the Titans on Monday morning, but he isn't worried about his players being distracted by the attention that has slowly built since the season opener. If anything, the Titans are feeding off the support.

"No one would've thought we would be where we are right now, let alone that we would've gotten the support we've gotten. It shows an awful lot for the relationship between this organization, the players and the fans," Fisher said.

Now the Titans are curious to see if their fans can wiggle their way into Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville for Sunday's AFC title game with the Jaguars (15-2). Direct flights from Nashville to Jacksonville were sold out as of Monday morning, and how to get tickets was the biggest question.