Bob McNair, the owner of the Houston Texans, in 2016. He paid a record $700 million for the expansion franchise, which returned professional football to Houston. Dustin Bradford/Getty Images
Bob McNair, a transplanted Texan who built an energy empire that earned him a fortune he would spend on an N.F.L. team and philanthropy and political causes, died on Friday at his home in Houston. He was 81.
The team he owned, the Houston Texans, announced his death in a statement. A team spokeswoman said the cause was cancer.
A longtime Houstonian, Mr. McNair founded Cogen Technologies, which became the largest privately owned cogeneration company in the world — and then sold the bulk of it in 1999 for $1.