Great leadership is not being taught in the many classrooms across the world. In those places instructions by people who are only scratching the surface of understanding are bold attempts to lead a team to victory. Only a handful of people in the entire world understand—sadly, but lucky for me the Glazer family in Tampa Bay is one of them. The owners of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers understand that leadership is not so much in the obvious recognition of being a leader—it is in setting the table so that others can succeed as individuals. The Glazers were the first to have a pirate ship in their north end zone that fires cannons when the team scores. They are experiencing two of their first players going into the Hall Of Fame under their ownership in Warren Sapp and Derrick Brooks with more on the way. They have produced many coaches for the NFL who have went to other teams and had great success, and they have produced several players and coaches who are now in the broadcast booth. The Glazers in Tampa are trend setters who benefit the NFL experience in ways that nobody in this current time will ever give them credit for—but years down the road in hindsight will be recognized as the most modern-day molders of the success in the NFL. It’s all about setting the table for unlocking individual success for the goals of a team—and the Glazers understand how to do that. When an idea of theirs does not work, they quickly get off it and try something new which is unique to them. Over the last 5 years the Bucs have made four coaching changes and recently after a 4 and 12 year they fired the entire coaching staff and front office for a complete rebuild with old Buccaneer coaches and players to launch a new decade of dominance. And to put a period at the end of their intentions, the Glazers have decided to remarket themselves with new uniforms that are quite spectacular and have the potential to unlock in their players, coaches and fans a new generation of Hall of Fame producing players that will take their organization where they want to go. It’s all about setting the table so that everyone else can enjoy the meal they’ve prepared. The Glazers are setting the table for the NFL’s next ten years with leadership that is uncommon in its scope and understanding.
I’m not keen on the high school and college process of vetting great players for the NFL. I don’t want to support public education just so that a school can produce the next Warren Sapp, or Gerald McCoy. It is up to talent scouts to find the kids to fill the game of football, not tax payers to fund the process from the front—even though that is how it’s done. But regardless of that, I do enjoy the game of football for a lot of reasons—most of them because of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. For 17 years I have watched the old uniforms and emblems released by the Glazers revolutionize the NFL. If the Bucs have not been the greatest influence on the game of football, I can’t imagine who else has been. While most of the sports related press focuses on quarterbacks, running backs and the stats in the win column, the Bucs invented the Tampa Two defense, and the kind of marketing that has generated tremendous revenue for every team in the league. It is because of the Bucs that the Patriots fire their muskets when they score—in direct answer the Buccaneer cannons in Tampa. It is because of the Bucs that other teams sought more aggressive color schemes as it is well documented how the Bucs have a higher winning percentage when they wear their red jerseys. Since 1997 when there was a uniform change the Bucs had a swagger about them that seemed provoked by their new uniforms which carried them to several playoff appearances culminating into a Superbowl win. The uniforms were so hated by other teams that the Oakland Raiders actually filed a law suit against the Bucs in 2003 which was thrown out due to the fact that it was filed in a California court while intellectual property issues are handled by federal courts.
Everyone is looking for an advantage. Most NFL players are as good as all the other ones, and most of the coaches are just as good as everyone else. So to gain a tactical advantage, team owners are always looking for the right leadership traits to carry their teams to higher levels of revenue streams. The best way to do that is to win and after a series of failed attempts to find the right coaching staff to carry the Buccaneers to a return to constant playoff appearances—the Glazers elected to spend the money on a complete makeover from top to bottom—even down to the uniforms. There is nothing better to unite the minds of the young players on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers team than being the first to have such an audacious helmet with the proud flag displayed boldly on the side, or having a chrome grill on their helmets. The Bucs a few years ago were the first to use iPads for their playbook, and now have a reputation of always looking for the latest and greatest in technical innovation to give their players an advantage over their opponents who are often just as good if not better.
People who have worked with me in the past are often frustrated that I do not care much for traditional management priorities. Rather I spend most of my effort on team building and setting the table for other people to have success. My success is when I remove the opposition for others to have success so that I can utilize a strategy of my choosing using the mass of a team to overwhelm the barriers of the task I want to achieve. That is easier said than done and won’t cause me any lost opportunities to reveal here. Often doing such things is like dragging a herd of donkeys up Mt. Everest one by one. The trick isn’t so much as seeing how it’s done, but knowing what to do and when. I do a lot of speeches, hand punching and deep psychological analysis to discover how to uncover hidden human potential—because it is there that an advantage always resides. Most people are skilled, and in the NFL everyone is fast, everyone is strong, everyone is smart—so to gain an advantage other elements have to come into play.
The Glazers understand this very well. When you land at Tampa International Airport, the Buccaneer flag that flies over One Buc Place—the training facility for the football team, is unmistakably huge. You can see it clearly from the airport. There is nothing like it anywhere in the country. When players come to Tampa to play for the Bucs they have to look up at that giant flag which essentially greets everyone who visits the Tampa area by air. The players have to live up to that high level of commitment provided by the Glazers represented by that giant flag.
I have spent many Sunday afternoons watching Tampa Bay Buccaneer football games and have seen a lot of excitement over the years—even when they lose. There is almost always a swagger about the Bucs which makes their football games more exciting. But that swagger does not come so much from the players, but from the Glazers who set the table for that swagger to find a home. The swagger comes from untouched human potential locked away from the world through various social restrictions. The Glazers ignore those restrictions so to unlock that potential for their use—and they are far more right than wrong. I fire cannons off my front porch when the Bucs score because the Glazers started the trend. I have enjoyed my game experiences in Tampa so much that I seek to duplicate Raymond James Stadium at my house on Sundays. I hang my flags everywhere—a few of which were actually given to me by the Glazer family, and I blast smoke machines all over the house and create quite a festive environment. I have yelled so loud at the television during some of these games that I have shattered glass. Nobody sleeps in my house during a Buccaneer football game, because they are exciting, and that excitement was created by the Glazers—not so much the players themselves. The player potential was always there, but the Glazers unlocked it for the entertainment of the fans.
Now with the new uniforms, this will only increase and I am excited about it. On the night of the announcement seen on the first video above with Warren Sapp revealing the new logo my wife was begging me for an evening in the hot tub—which would normally be a coveted activity. But I told her that I had to see the Buccaneers new logo first. Once I saw it we could get in. She came to me in a state of seductive undress, but the NFL Network indicated that it would be the last story of their broadcast, so I held up my finger to wait another 15 minutes. She then pleaded with me to turn it on at the hot tub, but I was glued to the screen. I wanted to see the new logo on the biggest screen possible. Finally, after waiting all day—and watching the NFL Network for 50 minutes, Warren Sapp revealed the new helmet and the next decade of my life flashed before me. The old uniform entertained my children as they watched my excitement during Buccaneer football games hoping the Bucs would score so I would yell at the television and fire off the cannons from our porch filling the house with smoke. Most of the time the smoke is so thick that nobody can even see the television. Now the new uniforms will usher my grandchildren into the same kind of behavior because the new logo is exciting and will lead to many more exciting games giving me something to cheer for—if only because it’s so cool.
I love the new uniforms and the Buccaneers as an organization who understand that leadership is not in the observable feats, but the hidden ones. Sometimes it really is as simple as a uniform change—and in this case—it’s a change that will have a dramatic impact on a team who really needed it. The table for success has been set, and now it’s time to eat. But the cuisine is not chicken, mashed potatoes, and corn on the cob—it’s the competition. And they are ripe for mass consumption.
Long before there was an internet I remember specifically picking up a copy of The Tampa Tribune at a Cincinnati area Borders Books and Music and eating a fabulous breakfast at Perkins while reading about the very dynamic changes that my favorite football coach Sam Wyche was bringing to the fledgling Tampa Bay Buccaneers. One of those changes was in uniform, one of the others was the free agent acquisition of Hardy Nickerson from the Pittsburg Steelers. Between Nickerson and Wyche the two paved the way for what became the Tony Dungy Era Buccaneers. For me Wyche as an NFL coach was way in front of the train, he was the first coach to teach Joe Montana, he invented the no huddle offense, pissed off most of the NFL and beat writers all over the country and was a pure bred innovator. He was bringing to Tampa—a team swimming in corruption from its owner Hugh Culverhouse’s three extramarital affairs–passion, drive, and conviction. Hugh gave Wyche free control to make the Bucs into something great, and that is just what Sam went to do. Nickerson was the first block that would become a wall built for the next four years in a defense that produced Warren Sapp, Derrick Brooks, John Lynch and many other notables. Nickerson hung around till 1999 teaching those young Buc defenders how to become Hall of Fame material. In 2013 Sapp was inducted, in 2014 Tony Dungy, Brooks and Lynch are all finalists. When Hugh died, Wyche was on the out as the Glazer family wanted to bring their own kind of guy in as coach, Tony Dungy which was an excellent choice. But Tony only honed off the edges of a team that Wyche built. Of that group was the upcoming line backer coach Lovie Smith. Now, twenty years later replacing the hard copy newspaper with the internet and an iPad, I am once again reading exciting news about the Buccaneers. Lovie Smith has been hired to be the new head coach after a few years with Greg Schiano did not produce winning seasons. And Lovie hired Hardy Nickerson to be his linebacker coach. An explosion of fun is headed for Tampa. For me it all started with the kind of intensity, and innovation seen in the clip below—with Hardy Nickerson and Sam Wyche—the coach who started it all in Tampa.
During this last season when my enemies wanted to give me a rough way to go they ribbed me incessantly about the Bucs terrible record. Under Schiano they started off the 2013 season 0 and 8 and knowing a bit about the Glazers, I knew the writing was on the wall. They fired Sam Wyche after four losing seasons even though he had some dramatic wins and brought to the team a dynamic that it had not had before. The Glazers fired the great Tony Dungy after getting repeatedly to the playoffs but not going to a Superbowl and hired Jon Gruden. Then Gruden was fired to give Raheem Morris a chance, a long time coach for the Bucs as the ownership was looking for a new Lovie Smith or Mike Tomlin—both guys had come into the NFL through Tampa Bay. When Raheem didn’t work out the Bucs went outside the box in hiring Schiano from Rutgers. When Schiano started 2013 flat, I knew he was gone and I told my enemies that. I still listened to the games and paid attention to the team for pure entertainment, but I knew the Glazers would pull the trigger at the end of the season—and they did. They fired Schiano on “Black Monday” a day where 5 NFL coaches lost their jobs, and by Wednesday even over New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day hired Lovie Smith by Wednesday. When Lovie did not take an NFL job during 2013 after being let go from the Chicago Bears in 2012 for not going to the playoffs that year with a 10 – 5 season I assumed the Glazers were talking to Smith to resurrect some of the old magic from the Dungy era—a period of time paved by Sam Wyche and Hardy Nickerson. So when I saw that Nickerson was coming back to Tampa not as a player—but a coach—I was ecstatic. Hardy Nickerson is my kind of player. He’s a class act, he’s tough, he’s fearless—and now he’s teaching the next generation of Buccaneers how to hit, strip away the ball, and in general wreak havoc against opposing offenses.
Football is a trivial game. The game itself isn’t any more important in the scheme of life than a typical poker game or a gambling excursion. Wins and losses come and go and football games are only games. But for me, people like Wyche, Dungy, and Lovie Smith, are innovators who brought their teams from the back of Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality train to the front. (See Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance CLICK HERE) Football however is the closest thing America has on a high-profile front that represents pure capitalism and the reasons why The United States was able to excel in the past economically while other countries struggled. Football is an American game built around American philosophy and when Sam Wyche in the clip above pointed to his players warning them not to shake hands with the other players before the game—he meant it. On the field of battle the other team is the enemy. The goal is competition, not hugging, kissing, or brown-nosing. The goal in football is to dominate the other team, and Hardy Nickerson bought into that philosophy—which carried over to players who mentored from him and became Hall of Fame players.
In normal everyday life I yell a lot. I tend to play at life much the way Hardy Nickerson played the game of football in Tampa Bay and Sam Wyche coached. In one day this past week I punched a desktop breaking the linoleum top, I threw a chair, sheered the lock of a door by head butting it and yelled at about 30 different people. I didn’t do these things to be intimidating or to put on a show. I did it because the passion in my heart had no place else to go and came out in explosive outbursts. Sam Wyche always had that kind of passion as a coach which is how I became a Buccaneer fan in the first place. For him it wasn’t fake or a show—it was real, and the players who played for him knew it. Whether the situation is a football game or everyday life, passion is something that the world needs more of. There is time for handshaking after the games we all play are done—but in the meantime you have to lay it all out on the field of play and give it everything—and I mean EVERYTHING.
I am very proud of the Glazer family in Tampa—a place I consider my second home. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers just had a 4 -12 season, but I have never been prouder to call myself a fan. I’m a fan because the Bucs fired a coach two years into a contract so they could abandon the guy and move on to a formula that wins. That formula might not work, and if it doesn’t, they’ll try again and again and again until it does. Meanwhile, they are always looking to bring in the type of coaches that made them successful to begin with, and hiring Hardy Nickerson as a member of the coaching staff is a tremendous indicator of just how serious they are about trying to win. The other NFL team in the town of my primary home is The Cincinnati Bengals who just allowed Marvin Lewis to lose his fifth playoff appearance game. The owners of the Bengals will bring Marvin back next year, and the year after, and the year after, and the year after so long as the guy wants to coach because they have no idea what they are doing. They simply hope that their time will come every now and again and wait their turn for a shot at the title. Unlike the Bucs, they wait for their time to come, while the Glazers try to make their time to come with forward-looking leadership. Hardy Nickerson and Sam Wyche are the embodiments of that philosophy and are the primary reasons that after all these years from that first peek at the Buccaneer team of 1993 that I am still a fan—and so long as the Glazers own the team—am likely to continue even if they never win again.
BECAUSE THEY TRY AND HAVE PASSION!
There is a lot of talk centering on my little grandson because as a young little guy just over a year old he is already grunting and making animal noises showing a tremendous amount of aggression. His father was a cage fighter, his mom is my kid, and he’s my grandson—what would anybody expect? When he sees me he greets me with a growl and a fist pump. His grunting and growling has been so obvious that people are taking notice and are concerned. But as a little boy who will grow up to be a man, I know damn well what I’m doing, and my relationship with him will be as such. The enemy is on the field and you don’t shake hands with them, you don’t whisper sweet nothings to them, you don’t make friends. You crush them, you pummel them, and you make them beg to come off the field with their very lives forgetting about victory. And those foundations start in the mind. Once the game is over, shake hands, go to church, and break bread. But in the meantime conquer, destroy, and win!
That is the way of the world, and makes everything in life—even for the losers—better. It is in Tampa what they call……………….”A Bucs Life.”
In that regard, the industry of football was shocked that the Buccaneers would be willing to pay $96 million dollars to one person who was not a quarterback. In professional football, it is simply unheard of to pay that kind of money to one person, especially coming off ACL surgery. To the world of sports analysis, no single person is worth that kind of money. Yet for the Glazers in Tampa, who have been searching for a way to give their fans another dominate Buccaneer defense similar to the days of Warren Sapp, it is worth the money to them. As I’ve said before, American Football is the game of capitalism, and countries who favor socialism do not understand why Americans love it so much. Soccer is the game of socialism, which is why almost every country that plays soccer as their national identity, have an economic system of socialism blowing the wind in their sails. With that perspective, Darrelle Revis is simply the best defensive player in the NFL and the Buccaneers wanted him, so they paid the money to get him. Revis set his value at such a high figure by being the best, and anybody who wants to enjoy his services can pay the money. That is how capitalism works. In this case, Revis gets the kind of money that being the best defensive NFL player for 6 years can garner, and the Bucs get a player that should be able to return the team to the number one defense in the league category. Revis was traded to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on April 21, 2013 signing a six-year contract worth $96 million, making him the highest paid defensive back in NFL history.[63] The Jets received the Buccaneers’ 2013 first round pick (13th overall) and a 2014 fourth round conditional pick, which can become a third round pick.
For those in the world who wish to believe that anybody, or any player if they have a good coach, or school to teach them, can become a player like Darrelle Revis due to institutional merit, they are sadly mistaken. Revis is great because of his individual effort. Revis was born to former high school track star Diana Gilbert and Darryl Revis.[64] Revis is the nephew of former NFL defensive lineman Sean Gilbert.[65] Revis’ high school accolades include the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 2003 Player of the Year, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 2003 WPIAL Class AA Player of the Year, and 2003 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “Fabulous 22”.
In the PIAA Class AA State Championship football game, he led Aliquippa to a come-from-behind 32–27 win over Northern Lehigh by scoring 5 touchdowns including 3 rushing touchdowns, a punt return, and the return of a blocked Northern Lehigh field goal attempt. He also completed a 39 yard pass, had a reception, and an interception in the game.[7]
In his junior and senior years of high school he led Aliquippa to WPIAL basketball championships, leading the team in scoring both years, culminating with a 25.2 PPG average his senior season. He also had the most interceptions out of any cornerback for high school. He would go on to become a dominant player in college and then in the NFL earning him the reputation of Revis Island referring to the part of the football field that he covers. He is the prototype of the “shutdown” cornerback.
In Tampa Bay, they suffered through a season during 2012 that had them losing most of their games by 7 points or less. They had the offensive weapons, they had a top ranking running defense, they had wonderful special teams, but they could not stop the pass. They had lost a number of players over the years at cornerback and just could not find the right combination. Teams learned about halfway through the 2012 season that the Bucs could be beaten if they went over the top and threw over their very good defensive lineman, and linebackers. And that’s what happened. All the Bucs could hope to do was win games by out-scoring their opponents, because they couldn’t stop them. This was an uncharacteristic element for a Glazer team known for their staunch commitment to defense. So it was well-known that they would address the issue in the upcoming off-season. But few thought they’d be willing to spend so much money to address the situation.
The Bucs are taking a chance with Revis, and Darrelle appears to understand it all too well. Coming off an ACL surgery is risky, and for the Bucs to spend so much money on a damaged player speaks volumes as to what they value in Revis’ head as opposed to his physical skill. But for them, the marketplace was a perfect fit. Darrelle with the Jets had carried the entire team on his back, but in Tampa, he will have a tremendous amount of help. He should thrive under the ownership of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but only time will tell, however, the Glazers deserve credit. They are not just looking for a cornerback to cover 45% of a football backfield. They are looking for a leader at the level they had with Warren Sapp, John Lynch and Derrick Brooks who played on the field at the same time.
The Revis trade articulates how much value one person on a team can be. Individuals are not interchangeable. While teams do involve coordination of many individuals to accomplish a task, it is individuals of exceptional character and skill who raise the bar from mediocrity to “excepetionalism.” The Buccaneers expect out of Revis exceptionalism and it is worth the money to them to get it. It is fun to root for a team ownership who is willing to commit so much money to one player to obtain not only victories, but a culture that is known to the entire city of Tampa—as a dedication to “DEFENSE” as it was established in the years leading up to their Superbowl win of 2003. Even if the experiment turns out to be a bust—which I don’t think it will I am proud to support the Tampa Bay Buccaneers because of their willingness to embark on such experiments. I am proud to wear their merchandise, to fly their flags, and watch their games. The Glazers work hard to give me a product I can enjoy and they value the art of capitalism to a level that I don’t see in any other NFL team. That commitment is all over the Revis trade, and for that I am extremely excited for the upcoming 2013 season. I have a feeling it’s going to be a fun year to be a Buc fan!
Game day at the Hoffman House is a fun day for my family. I put on quite an extravaganza for every game. During the fall, the game can be heard streaming from my garage on the radio broadcast from Tampa and the televisions inside my house are on the game as I monitor the details over computer screens. I thoroughly enjoy Tampa Bay Football games, and this year there will be more to cheer for than there has been in a long time. For me, the cheers are not so much for points scored, but for points prevented as I cheer for a return of the great Buccaneer defenses of the past, and the rise of a new age of The Buccaneer Way that will raise the bar for the entire NFL, and drive the American economy with a wonderful example of capitalism at its finest in a game only understood by free people in free lands who love to sip beer and eat chicken wings as the leaves outside our windows begin to fall.
The trouble with statist governments that are philosophically built on the premise of socialism is that they attempt to operate without defining who the best among them are. Their goal is to determine how they can pull down—or mooch off of others to establish equality among all human beings. But in American football, teams like the ones that the Glazers build are always on the lookout for the “exceptional” individuals who will elevate them into victories. Since the Buccaneers parted ways with Warren Sapp way back in 2004 due to his expensive price tag but aging performance the Bucs have tried to duplicate the kind of teams they had while Warren Sapp played for them, especially during the years of 1997 to his release in 2004. Sapp was an emotional leader who increased the performance of everyone around him, so he was the key ingredient to the Buccaneers classic shut down defense. Broadcasters, coaches, NFL owners, agents and anybody else in the business of professional football tend to believe in statistics using purely mathematical analysis believing falsely that people like Warren Sapp could be easily replaced by new number one draft picks, but even though the Bucs have been very aggressive in trading out coaches, players, and any dynamic they could find with a wonderful facility at One Buc Place in Tampa which watches virtually every college player in the entire country, they have not found another Warren Sapp. They’ve been looking, but there just hasn’t been one.
High school sports coaches in every school in the country have failed to produce another Warren Sapp. Out of the thousands of potential defensive tackles, another Warren Sapp has not emerged in the NFL. But why? Well, the answer is one that I talk about all the time and with Sapp there is not a better example in professional sports.
Sapp’s mother worked three jobs, yet was always there to wake him up to go to school. She set in his mind a work ethic that made Sapp a monster on the practice field. But while his mom was always working and wasn’t home much to care for him, Sapp played football all the time with his older brothers who did everything they could to restrict their younger sibling. Warren Sapp being a young man with an extremely vicious temper and a yearning to win, never let his older brothers suppress his spirit. He worked hard to become bigger, stronger, and faster than anybody else. And if he found that he came up against those who were bigger, stronger, or faster than he was, then he would beat them with superior will-power.
Sapp went on to become a dominate football player at his high school in a suburb of Orlando then was a dominant player at the University of Miami. He was drafted by the Bucs in 1995 at the start of the Glazer era by Sam Wyche—a man who was nearly as colorful as a coach as Sapp was as a player. Wyche used to be the head coach for the Bengals before Mike Brown took over the team upon his father’s death. Sam Wyche was responsible for the famous, “you don’t live in Cleveland” speech to the entire stadium. Wyche didn’t last long under the statist like Mike Brown, so he became the coach in Tampa back in 1992. Wyche had some success in Tampa, and was responsible for many of the draft picks that built the team who would go on to win the Superbowl a few years later. After five years of not taking the Buccaneers to championship form, the Glazers cut Wyche and hired Tony Dungy. It was under Tony that Sapp found a mentor that was perfect for his personality, and the Buccaneers became arguably the best defense in the NFL for a number of years.
Sapp is one of only six defensive players in NFL history to make the Pro Bowl, be named Defensive Player of the Year, and win a Super Bowl or NFL title. The others are Joe Greene, Jack Lambert, Lawrence Taylor, Reggie White and Sapp’s former teammate, Derrick Brooks. He is now reckoned as the prototype three-technique defensive tackle; ever since his retirement NFL teams scouting defensive tackles have reportedly been looking for a “Baby Sapp.”[6]
He was selected to 7 Pro Bowls, was named a First-Team All-Pro four times and a Second-Team All-Pro twice, while adding a spot on the 1990s and 2000s All-Decade Teams and, most impressively, earning Defensive Player of the Year honors after an amazing 16.5-sack season in 1999. Sapp was a key player for the imposing Buc defenses of the late ’90s and early ’00s, truly the cog that made that defense go.
Sapp played the game of football like a gladiator in a Roman arena. He relished the combat of daily play and always understood that for every admirer, he had many who wanted to take him down, so he never let his guard relax on or off the field. He was often careful to eat food in restaurants in towns where the Buccaneers visited as he was concerned that enemies of his might tamper with his health and he had practice customs before each game that involved skipping through the enemy team’s side of the field to show his dominance over them before a game. Warren Sapp was geared up for conflict at all hours of every day and he relished it. It made him better, stronger and faster, a regiment that had started with his mother who worked hard 24 hours a day 7 days a week, and older brothers who constantly challenged him. Sapp had an extremely colorful career with the Buccaneers and a fighting spirit that other players like Ronde Barber, Derrick Brooks, John Lynch, Mike Alstott, and many others would rally behind to become one of the most animated, and technically proficient sports teams to ever take a field. But it all started with the extreme charisma of an individual in Warren Sapp which led to many controversies.
Mike Sherman confrontation
On November 24, 2002, at Raymond James Stadium, Sapp drew criticism for a cheap shot on the Green Bay Packers‘ Chad Clifton during an interception return by the Buccaneers. Clifton was jogging down field, away from the main action, and was blindsided by Sapp. Clifton suffered a severe pelvic injury on the play.[10] The hit sent Clifton to the hospital. He was hospitalized for almost a week and could not walk unaided for five more weeks. In 2005, the NFL Competition Committee agreed on new guidelines for “unnecessary roughness”, making hits such as that suffered by Clifton illegal.
In an exchange caught by television cameras following the game, Packers’ coach Mike Sherman approached Sapp and said to him, “That was a chicken shit play.”[11] In response, Sapp screamed repeatedly at Sherman: “You’re so tough? Put on a fucking jersey!”[10] Sherman later called Sapp “a lying, shit-eating hound. … If I was 25 years old and didn’t have a kid and a conscience, I would have given him an ass-kicking right there at the 30-yard line.”[10] Sherman later said of Sapp: “The joviality that existed after [the hit] when a guy’s lying on the ground, with numbness in his legs and fingers, I just thought that wasn’t appropriate for any NFL player.”[11]
The skipping incidents
During pre-game warm-ups of a December 23, 2002 Monday Night Football game at Raymond James Stadium, Warren skipped among the Pittsburgh Steelers players during their pre-game warmups. Steelers running back Jerome Bettis shoved Sapp, and this was followed by a heated argument between the two teams. Sapp felt that he was made an example by the NFL by being fined for that first skipping incident. “That’s all this is about,” said Sapp. “In my nine years in this league, no one’s been fined for verbally abusing officials. It’s unprecedented.”[12] The Buccaneers had been earlier ridiculed by Steelers’ Lee Flowers as being “paper champions.” Despite losing to the Steelers in that game, Sapp and the Buccaneers went on to win Super Bowl XXXVII five weeks later.
In 2003, during an October 6 Monday Night Football game against the Indianapolis Colts, Sapp was scolded for skipping through and disrupting the Colts players, who were spread out on the field, stretching during pre-game warmups. There was much anticipation and national interest going into the game, which was the return of former head coach Tony Dungy to Tampa. The Colts wound up erasing a 21-point deficit in the final four minutes, and defeated the Buccaneers 38-35 in overtime, initiating a downslide for the defending champions.
A week later, on October 12, 2003, prior to the game against the Washington Redskins, Sapp was running onto the field when he bumped into an NFL referee. The incident drew a fine of $50,000. Sapp’s response to the fine: “It’s a slave system. Make no mistake about it. Slave master say you can’t do it, don’t do it. They’ll make an example out of you.”[13]
Ejection for unsportsmanlike conduct
On December 23, 2007, Sapp was involved in an altercation with NFL referees near the end of the second quarter of the Raiders’ game at Jacksonville.[14]
The incident began when linesman Jerry Bergman mistakenly assumed that the Raiders wished to decline a Jacksonville 10-yard penalty. Sapp, the defensive captain, began speaking with referee Jerome Boger, indicating that the Raiders instead wished to accept the penalty. The conversation became heated, with Sapp gesturing and swearing. This resulted in an unsportsmanlike conduct call by Boger against Sapp. Sapp and his defensive teammates continued interacting with the officials after the penalty was called, resulting in a second unsportsmanlike conduct penalty against Sapp and another unsportsmanlike conduct penalty assessed against teammate Derrick Burgess. Finally, the coaches and officiating staff entered the field and began physically separating and removing the arguing players. Boger claimed that during this time Sapp “bumped” him; Sapp denies making physical contact. Regardless, at this point Boger levied a third unsportsmanlike conduct penalty against Sapp and ejected him from the game. Sapp did not play in the second half and was eventually fined $75,000 by the NFL; Burgess received a $25,000 fine.[15]
Being the best took its toll on Sapp. He made a lot of mistakes off the field, particularly with women. He had nobody in his life who could prepare him for what society would do to him while being the best. He was playing a capitalist game, but the society at large was hell-bent on socialism leaving them empty husks looking to be filled by his beaming personality. Naturally women threw themselves at him and he accepted causing him and his wife to separate in 2003. The alimony to all the mothers of his children would eventually bankrupt him once his playing days were over in 2008. His hard life and multitude of enemies had caught up with him. As a player who had once had millions of dollars in his pockets, had less than $1000 dollars in his bank account in April of 2012 when he had to finally file for bankruptcy. Warren’s big problem is that he failed to understand that the world would mooch off him to the extent that they had, and he did not put a stop to it with the same aggression he displayed on the football field.
But he wouldn’t be the first, and he won’t be the last to find that the world is filled with personalities who attach themselves to strong individuals for safety, security and just a fragment of charisma. They will take, and take and take until there isn’t anything left of such people—and once they’ve done that—they will kick you to the curb and look for someone else to loot, pillage, and crush. That is the ways of socialism, especially in modern America where a mixed economy allows such things to occur. When people like Warren Sapp who have hearts as big as their tempers and try to do so much for so many people, but fail to recognize that there is no way to ever stop the perils of socialism when the methods of capitalism are removed from their lives, then the game is truly over. And for Warren Sapp, it ended in bankruptcy.
But Sapp is a fighter, and he has gotten right back up again from his hard fall in the post football era of his life. As terrible as the news for him was in 2012 he is now a Hall of Famer during his first year of eligibility and he will now be in the famed Buccaneers Ring of Honor. He is being brought back into the culture of the Glazer Buccaneers to mentor young players into emulating him so that the Bucs can rise once again to the kind of team it was under his previous leadership. I have often said I would rather have a man like Warren Sapp on the sideline even if he was a quadriplegic—just for his mind and passion than a whole army of first-round draft picks. I’d take Warren Sapp for my football team as just a talking head before I’d take a team full of Heisman Trophy winners any day of the week. Warren Sapp is that special of an individual.
So Warren, I will be there with you when you get your Ring of Honor. I will be watching. You are a very special person, especially to my daughter and me. I have thrown televisions out the front window of my house watching you play for the Buccaneers in anger over calls made against your actions. I have jumped so hard in my living room that I have cracked the ceiling punching it after one of your sacks. I have yelled myself hoarse after Buccaneer games that you played. I have rooted for you as an individual spark that ignited a Buccaneer domination of the NFL and it is because of this era that I still hang a banner dedicated to the Buccaneers in the foyer of my home to greet all who enter. My daughter and I have enjoyed your life so far and we look forward to many more years of your entertainment. I watch the NFL commentaries just to see what you have to say because I trust your opinions over those who do not think with the same passion, and determination. You played the game the way I think and for that I will always be grateful.
Football is a game of capitalism. What happened to Warren Sapp is his fault in that he didn’t recognize that socialism rules the world outside of a football field, and he discovered tragically that his beaming personality and wonderful work ethic could not generate the kind of income he had become accustom to without a football field under his feet. When he was allowed to be a gladiator in the arena, the world was his for the taking, and he took it, but outside the stadium, the world took from him, and he gave it away thinking that his dynamic personality and work ethic could always provide what he needed. But it didn’t. However, a part of him will always be hanging in Raymond James Stadium, so in a way, Warren Sapp will return to the arena of football to stay. The Buccaneers will never let another player wear the number of Warren Sapp again—and they never should. Because it is unlikely that another player like Warren will ever take to the field again, because he was one of a kind, and still is.
You can visit Warren Sapp personally at his website by clicking the link below.
But Eric is a tough kid and shortly after his injury, he insisted to be taken off his breathing machine. Then he gained feeling in his hands. LeGrand worked every day to move a part of his body and now he can actually stand for periods of time, which is an absolutely tremendous achievement. Coach Schiano who was his coach at Rutgers when LeGrand went down with the injury has been helping the young man stay focused, along with the fantastic support of a mother who refuses to quit, and it is becoming clear what forces have helped give Eric LeGrand the inner strength to beat these impossible odds to recovery.
Coach Schiano is now the coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a team that is loaded with talent, but lost their way last season with a lack of focus and leadership. My love of the Buccaneers stems from the ownership of the Glazer family, and how innovative they have been in their approach to the game of football, and the NFL in general. When they hired Schiano after many interviews with many coaches, some who had taken their teams to last year’s playoff games, it was evident they saw something special in Schiano that would resurrect a level of greatness that the fans of Tampa Bay had come to expect.
Schiano has not disappointed so far, he has made some fantastic acquisitions in the free agency market, and this year’s draft is considered to be one of the best in Buccaneer history. The team has managed to create some cap room to work with, and they have used it to get some really good players to fill the voids exposed during the last season. That is why it seemed like a publicity stunt to see that Schiano had put LeGrand on the Buccaneer 90 man roster. After all, there is no way that LeGrand will play DT for Tampa Bay in 2012 if ever. Even if he could gain the ability to walk again, there is simply no way that he could outperform the hoards of other athletes all competing for the same job who have not suffered a debilitating injury. That is the conventional wisdom of the stats and science in placing an NFL player on the field to win football games. But conventional wisdom does not produce exceptions, and in any competitive endeavor, it is the exceptional that tip the balance of power in favor of a victor.
Great players are a dime a dozen, and coaches, teams and fans are always on the look-out for those special individuals who display leadership in the face of adversity and overcome odds that are insurmountable, and LeGrand certainly exhibits these traits without even stepping onto a football field.
I don’t trust much of what doctors tell me, because I find the limits of their medical understanding confining and their belief in the potential of the human body to be deficient. My own doctors and rehab specialists tried to guide me in returning my knee to full function after extensive ACL surgery. I had torn my ACL in a basketball game, and then further damaged my knee by tearing the MCL while jumping through a wall of fire performing a whip stunt. The grass was wet to protect it from being burnt, so when I landed my foot slipped out from under me because there was no ACL to support my leg, and my femur actually drove into the ground leaving a small crater. My knee-joint slipped so far out of socket the bone had no knee in the way to protect it.
Doctors gave me weeks of rehab as the prognosis once they repaired my ACL, but I worked hard to recover as quickly as possible. I had my surgery done on a Thursday; I was walking and back to work on the following Monday. I could have milked time off work for weeks if I wanted to, but that is not how I think. I wanted to recover, and get back on my feet quickly—and I did. I went to rehab every couple of days, and I felt they were wasting my time, like my appointments were simply to provide work for the rehab employees and had very little to do with my actual recovery. I stunned the staff recovering 6X’s faster than the average, according to them. When my insurance company saw my progress with the rehab clinic, they cut the payments to my rehab. And on that day, it was my last session. I wasn’t about to pay for something out of my own pocket that I could do better on my own.
As I was leaving my therapists warned me that I might lose my advanced progress if I did not come to them anymore, in fact, my leg might not be as strong. They were aghast that I refused to take any medication during this time and made it sound as though my leg would fall off if I quit therapy. Within weeks of walking out on my therapists because my insurance company would no longer cover the costs, I was running on my leg again, and jumping through walls of fire—doing what I love doing.
My wife had ruptured a disk in her lower back carrying my youngest daughter the rest of the way up a mountain hike and didn’t realize it until we got home because she had difficulty walking. We went to see a back surgeon and discovered that she was about to become paralyzed from the waist down due to the disk slippage, so she went through emergency surgery.
After the surgery she had lost a lot of feeling in her toes and parts of her leg and was told that those nerves in her leg had been severally damaged, and she may never be able to walk correctly. Well, to my wife, this simply wasn’t an option. She had kids to raise and things to do. We rubbed her legs and feet for hours stimulating the damaged nerves and gradually she regained most of her feeling, and within a month, was able to walk normally. Again, if we had listened to the doctors, she would probably still have problems walking and her body would most likely be addicted to some pharmaceutical product to this very day even though that was well over decade ago.
The injury to LeGrand is much more severe than either one of the injuries described above, but what he has that is in common is a will to recover, to conquer his debilitation and take charge of his own body and its functions, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. For that, Coach Schiano is wise to understand that by placing LeGrand on the very young Tampa Bay Buccaneers football team that the presence of LeGrand will inspire the other players to greatness, to be at the top of their physical prowess, because compared to LeGrand, what does anyone have to complain about. If LeGrand can work out with the Buccaneers players and they see what it looks like to recover from paralysis what does a healthy player have as an excuse to not strengthen a ham string injury, or a sprained ankle?
For the inspiration of having such a positive presence on the practice field, LeGrand is worth the roster spot, and will certainly earn the privilege of playing in the NFL, even if it’s just on the sidelines. Because like most games, the battles are not won just on the field of play, they are won in the mind of the participants before the contest even begins.
I believe that with the positive attitude that Eric LeGrand has, with the support of his very positive mother and mentoring of Coach Schiano, that Eric may very well take his first steps on the practice field at One Buc Place sometime during the upcoming football season. Once Eric is on the field around other athletes, that desire to compete will drive the cells of his body to his cause, and he will walk while in a Buccaneer uniform, and the world will shudder at the miracle. LeGrand will become a shock to the medical industry of the world as new hope will be given to all victims of paralysis. The medicine of positive thinking will begin to get serious reappraisal.
Further, I believe that by the 2013 season, Eric will be running again and will be able to practice on the field simulating plays with the practice squad. And because he will have recovered and worked so hard to come back to that point, he will be a superior athlete, far surpassing what most in his position have otherwise achieved, because he has had to learn to overachieve just to recover.
By the 2014 season Eric will be in the rotation of DT’s in Tampa and he will find that he has surpassed his previous playing ability with a ferocity that defies fear, because he will have a new lease on life and will know that he has survived the worse that can be thrown at him, and he beat it back and the world will gasp at his stunning performance on third downs.
By 2015, just 5 short years from his terrible injury at Rutgers, at the tender age of 27, Eric LeGrand will be the dominate DT in the league and will be the starter for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Many all over the NFL will be comparing him to Warren Sapp and Lee Roy Selmon but Eric will have done something nobody in the history of the world has done, he will have returned from an injury that doctors had doomed him to a life of paralysis to not only recover, but be bigger, stronger, and faster than ever before because he had knocked on death’s door and faced that ultimate fear at the brink, and that will make him unstoppable. And his never-say-quit attitude will carry the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a string of Superbowl wins that will dominate the NFL for a 6 year period up to the 2022 season. And Eric LeGrand will be known as one of the greatest players to ever play the game and he’ll not only change the game of football for the better, but will alter the course of medical science.
It will all come back to the odd decision of Coach Schiano and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to sign a paralyzed, but optimistic kid to their 90 man roster in 2012, a decision that will reenergize Buccaneer football in Tampa to a new decade of dominance and inspire the world to the unlimited possibilities of positive thinking. Once again it will be proven that the prizes of life do not go to the quicker, the stronger, or the largest man, but to the one who simply refuses to quit and believes that they can do anything once they set their mind to it and force their bodies to equal the quality of their thoughts. The strength of heart simply has more value than the bulk of muscle, and is so rare that even if a person is in a wheel chair they can have more value than a whole busload of healthy players that are the best physical athletes of their age, yet lack the inner drive to achieve beyond expectation. That is why Eric LeGrand will change the world, starting with the fate of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers!
Fire the CANNONS!!!!!!
This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon
Ok, I’m happy………………..my favorite football team on the face of the planet has managed to secure a 16th season from their future Hall of Famer, Ronde Barber. I was concerned after the Buc’s picked up Eric Wright, that Barber might retire, or that he might not want to play for Greg Schiano who will be Barber’s fourth head coach for the same team over his career. But Ronde has agreed to terms that will allow him to return for a one year deal to help the Buccaneers bring back to life a defense that was epic under the schemes of the great Monte Kiffin.
The offseason moves made by the Glazer family, who own the Bucs have been impressive so far on paper. I think they did the right thing to hire the right kind of guy in Greg Schiano from Rutgers. It is very difficult to walk in the footsteps of coaches like Tony Dungy and Jon Gruden, but the Glazers interviewed a lot of coaches before settling on Schiano. After making that hire they proceeded to hire a completely new coaching staff and picked up some key free agents.
It might seem strange to some who read here every day to understand why I enjoy the Tampa Bay Buccaneers so much. Well, aside from my love of pirates, the Buccaneers have a long history of innovation and thinking outside the box for a sports franchise, and even when they lose, most of the time they are exciting to watch.
The Glazer family operates their franchise from the front of the train. If you read here often you know what I’m talking about. If you don’t, then CLICK HERE to learn what I mean. It is a scary place to be at the front of the train, and sometimes you pick the wrong track, which is what happened when the Buc’s committed so much in Raheem Morris, who was a good coach, but had lost the team halfway through last season. But that doesn’t mean everything Raheem did was bad. He went out and found a lot of good talent, by thinking outside the box, and those players are now gathered in one place. What they lacked was leadership, which Raheem could not bring to the table unfortunately, I think because of his youth.
So the Glazers rather than overreacting from the back of the train and spending a lot of money on a quarterback to save the day, like a Payton Manning, or a Bret Farve type, stuck with their players and decided to invest in leadership instead of players. The Glazers chose to go against the knee jerk reaction of the status quo by throwing players at the wall and hoping they stick and instead found leaders who think at the front of the train.
It has been difficult for Tampa Bay to retain their identity after Monte Kiffin left to help coach with his son Lane. But Tampa had to deal with that problem sooner or later, and they have tried to find the right personnel who will help them regain that level of play.
The Bucs have a lot of great young players and statistically, they should be one of the best teams on any football field. But it takes more than just players to achieve greatness. Greatness is more than just throwing and catching footballs. Or running a football. Or stopping someone from doing those things against you. Greatness is in the heart, it’s at the front of the train of thought. It’s in the drive to always become better. And for young players to see greatness, they need to be around it, so they can see what it’s supposed to look like.
In Tampa Bay the Buccaneers organization under the Glazer family has seen many players retire as Buc players, notably, Derrick Brooks, Mike Alstott, and now Ronde Barber, and each of those players late in their careers took pay concessions in order to stay with the Bucs, so the organization could afford to keep them around. Ronde if he really wanted to could most likely double his price on the open free agency market, but Ronde like Brooks and Alstott, even John Lynch before he suffered a serious neck injury and Warren Sapp just before going to the Raiders as a free agent were willing to take significant cuts in pay to stay with the Bucs. This is how so much veteran leadership has been able to stay with Tampa over the years, and why it is such a relief to see that Ronde is going to stay one more year, so that the young Buc players can learn from him.
The people I might sit at the bar in Chili’s with on a Sunday afternoon watching football understand the economics of Ronde’s decision. They also understand that Payton Manning couldn’t stay with the Colts because the price tag to keep Payton was simply too great. Around the bar over beer, nacho’s and cheese dip, people understand that sports teams can’t afford to pay $20 million dollars for a player that might not play a lot and is likely to end up hurt before the end of the season, so they often cut their losses unless the player is willing to take major cuts in pay.
But in the next conversation with the same group of people, they will say that teachers and school administrators should be paid an infinite sum of money never to be capped off. Never to end. They will say that it’s OK for a school system to operate with a top-heavy payroll and that if more money is needed to balance the budget, then taxes should be increased.
Why are people smart about sports, but not about education—or government? I have a lot of theories, but for now it’s just an observation to consider. When I say that a school system, or a public service that charges taxpayers for their service requires more money, I wonder how many of those employees at the top of their pay scale would be willing to do as Ronde Barber has done so he could stay with his team, and take a cut in pay. To help his team out with leadership so he can play another year with the group he has known and loved for years. Or should he betray his fans, and his employers the way Labron James did in Cleveland, and just go for the big money and tell everyone else to go to hell.
One of the reasons I like the Buccaneers as an organization is because of players like Ronde Barber. There is no question as to where his loyalty is, or what his intentions are. And because he is a straight shooter he has a lot of leadership to provide the young talent who need someone to look up to for guidance. It’s too bad that people like Ronde Barber are so few and far between. I can only wish for a world that had more people like him, who put loyalty before a payday, and honor before ease of gain, because if more were like him, it’s likely that the world would be a much better place. School levies wouldn’t be required, politics wouldn’t be so dirty, and people would mean what they say.
But since there aren’t many people like Ronde Barber in the world, I will enjoy the only one I know of on Sunday afternoons as he plays at Raymond James Stadium for one more year, and thank God he is still there. Because someone must pass on the torch, and it’s a veteran like Barber who has the potential to lead a rag-tag team of youngsters into the next decade of domination because it’s leadership that does such things and leadership exists at the front of the train, not in the size of the paycheck.
To understand the truth it helps to view the world through Hoffman Lenses. To understand what those are CLICK THE LINK. If you can’t handle the truth, then don’t read here.
It has been a long time since I’ve been able to write anything positive about my favorite football team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Shortly after writing a nice piece about my high hopes during the 2011 season, Raheem Morris lost control of the team somewhere between the game against the San Francisco 49’ers and the London game against the Chicago Bears.Raheem could not get his young players focused after loses to those two teams in the middle of the season and the Buc’s finished the rest of the season going from first place to never winning another game the rest of the season. This left the Buc’s needing to fire Morris who had been with the Glazers since he was a very young man. But when you are head coach, and you don’t win, someone has to pay. So the Glazers not only fired Raheem Morris, but every single coach on the football team, not out of meanness, but out of necessity. The press around Tampa Bay has been ablaze with speculation as to who in the world would coach the Buccaneers in the wake of this devastating termination of the entire coach staff. Many of the fans have been very frustrated that the Glazers interviewed so many coaches from the NFL, but committed to none of them. As January ticked away and time was running out panic began to set in from the fan base. They wanted to know who was going to hold the reigns of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and wanted to see how the coaching staff would be rebuilt, and they wanted it quickly. But the Glazers didn’t blink. They held out, they interviewed the held out some more—they interviewed some more, until they finally announced the hiring of Greg Schiano from Rutgers University.
The reason I’m a Tampa Bay Buccaneer fan as opposed to any other football franchise is that the Glazers are not afraid to gamble to get exceptional results. This has given them some of the best players in football history, particularly on defense, but some of the best coaches anywhere, many of them still coaching in the NFL. This is because the Buccaneers as an organization put philosophy first and emotion second when they make football decisions, and they use the three basic philosophic axioms to make those decisions, existence, consciousness, and identity. Knowing they were getting old and needed new blood to their philosophy of existence, the Buc’s fired a very good coach in John Gruden to promote Raheem Morris since Morris was being courted by NFL teams all over the country looking for the next Mike Tomblin of the Pittsburg Steelers. The Glazers had lost Tomblin once, and they didn’t want to lose Morris, and since the great defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin was leaving the NFL and head coaching jobs were being dangled in front of Morris the Glazers pulled the trigger, dumped Gruden and gave both jobs to Morris, who went on to be coach of the year shortly thereafter. Morris brought in great young players full of zip and poise, but eventually NFL teams were able to spot Morris’s weakness, his lack of ability to adapt and teach his team the kind of discipline needed to adjust a game plan when it didn’t work and constantly relearn plays to present fresh looks. Once teams figured out the Buccaneer playbook, the Bucs were exposed and could not win another game the rest of the year, and that was Morris’s fault. The Buc’s had lost their identity in the axiom of philosophy. This then affected their consciousness as a team and their ability to win games. Many fans of football think that what wins football games are strictly the X’s and O’s. Many sports analysts will also say such things. But they are wrong. What makes a winner on the football field is the same as what makes a winner in politics, in business, in family relationships, in personal endeavor; it’s having a correct philosophy.
The Glazers rather than hire an NFL coach to just come in and win a few more games next year with the same players looked to fix their philosophy in the offseason. They aren’t looking for another quarterback, a free agent linebacker or even new D-backs. The Bucs are looking to fix their philosophy at the most fundamental level. What is the goal of their existence? How do they know they have that existence, which is their consciousness, and what is their identity which unifies those two primary axioms? This is why the Buccaneers as an organization fly that giant flag over the practice field. The Glazers know full well what they are doing. They took a gamble on Morris, it failed, so they abandoned that train of thought not because Raheem wasn’t a great coach, I think he was, but because he wasn’t able to maintain the three axioms of philosophy that the Buccaneer organization is expected to uphold. So the Glazers went out and hired a coach who displayed that he understood what those axioms are.
Winning is not about spending money, it’s not about hiring a “has been.” It’s about being ahead of the curve and seeing what sometimes isn’t there yet. So I’m excited about the new hire of Greg Schiano. I am happy to see that someone outside the box is getting a chance to build a philosophy in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers organization that not only reflects the success of the past, but the success that is yet to be. I will continue to fly my Buccaneer flags and look forward to an exciting 2012 season which should be quite exciting.
But remember, it’s not just about football, the games we play in life are about strategy and strategy is about winning wars. Whether the wars are ones of blood, ones of politics, or ones of just scores on a board, winning is a philosophy. But the key is in finding the correct philosophy, no matter what the endeavor is. For the Buccaneers, their philosophy isn’t just to win one year or two years, but to have a philosophy of winning consistently. And for us all, winning can sometimes hit us in the face by accident, but winning consistently is a philosophy that must first be identified by knowing our existence, recognizing our consciousness, and rallying being our identity.
Even though Tampa Bay lost big today it is important to have adversity because it builds character, and when a young team like the Bucs are have been winning at will, they sometimes take things for granted. So losses are opportunities to build character, because the overall franchise is more than one game and this article is about the “bigger picture.” The young kids will bounce back and solve their problems, because the foundation beneath the loss is of high quality. And such a lesson is one everyone faces at some time or another whether it be an individual, or an organization. Winning all the time does not challenge the soul, overcoming something that shakes your foundations do. And with all the talk on this site about failure in government, it is because they do not go back to the film room and figure out why. They just ask for a “bailout,” and lose time and again without improvement and use higher taxes to prop up their self-esteem. A football team does not have the option of raising taxes. They have to dig deep and improve themselves.
On any given Sunday in the falling leaves of autumn, at the end of my driveway you will see two flags. You will also see flags all the way up my driveway and on the porch of my house also. And in the living room on football Sunday, it’s always Halloween, even at Christmas, as skulls, smoke machines and more flags are displayed. But the flags at the end of my driveway are special, very special, because they were given to me by the owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers himself and are the focus of my enjoyment of that football team which is run by that very innovative and generous family in one of my favorite cities, Tampa Bay.
To understand the history of why I’m a Tampa Bay Buccaneer fan, please see two of my previous articles on this subject.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers as an ownership represents much about my own style of management, and ideas about how all organizations should work They have as a franchise produced an extraordinary number of great players, coaches, and personalities who now populate the TV analyst’s booth on every sports channel. But they have done so without a lot of hoopla and fanfare, unless you happen to live in Tampa Bay. To the world outside of Tampa Bay, The Buccaneers are just another NFL team. The media doesn’t really understand why they are special, only that there is something unique going on in the Bay City of Florida that they sometimes contemplate with empty questions, and even emptier answers.
Players have come and gone, and coaches too, but in Tampa Bay there has been a consistency of always being competitive, of at least being an exciting team to watch no matter what year it was. The history of the team runs deep. Unfortunately, because NFL teams cannot afford to keep all their highly paid players, due to business limits, a team like the Buccaneers must always push the limits and dig deep to find ways to win even when they lose their best talent.
After losing coaches like John Gruden, which was a business decision, Monte Kiffin, the future Hall-of-Fame defensive coordinator, Warren Sapp, John Lynch, Derrick Brooks, (due to age) and many, many others including the power running full-back Mike Alstott, Tampa seemed out of cannon balls after nearly a decade of dominate defense and trend setting achievements as a franchise. All over the country, sports reporters were predicting doom and gloom for the Buccaneers. But I wasn’t, and neither were the Glazers. The Glazers knew they had been breeding talent down in Tampa for years and decided that if they were losing all that great talent on all sides of the ball, including coaches that they needed to look internally for the next great coach to build their team and maintain their reputation. The Glazers were not looking to an “outsider” to just merely win games in Tampa Bay. The Glazers wanted to preserve their culture that they had built, a static culture that required someone who had always been there and grown up in the organization all along, starting as a very young man.
It wasn’t hard for me to predict that Raheem Morris would be the next head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Bucs had lost Mike Tomlin to the Pittsburg Steelers who was a coach in Tampa just a few years prior, and they weren’t going to lose the much sought after assistant coach in Raheem to another team, because Morris had grown up with all those great players and coaches on the inside, and the Glazers had enough understanding of what they brought to the NFL to keep a coach who could maintain their culture with a dynamic personality full of energy. So the Bucs promoted Raheem Morris to head coach and defensive coordinator, which was unprecedented in the NFL and drew much criticism from virtually every expert in the industry. Many were saying that Tampa Bay Buccaneer Football was on its way out.
Except me…….and I let Bryan Glazer know it after a series of terrible loses where the youngest head coach in the NFL was struggling through his first season with a decimated team lost to free agency, and age. But Raheem is the kind of guy who never quits, and his personality is as my wife says……infectious, so it was only a matter of time before Raheem turned things around and got the Tampa Bay Buccaneers playing the caliber of football everyone expected from this very dynamic organization, a team that could live up to that Jumbo Tron intro. Bryan sent me those flags in thanks because it was a tough time for he and his family. Virtually everyone was calling them stupid, cheap, and out-of-touch for hiring Morris when Bill Parcels had indicated he wanted the Tampa job, and news analysts were chipping away at the Glazer family credibility at every opportunity. But they trusted their instincts and stayed with Morris, and I thought a kind word would go a long way in their darkest hour. So Bryan sent me those flags in thanks. Those flags aren’t the kind you can buy from a street vender or even on EBay. They are only passed out during home playoff games, so they are very rare. Bryan gave me the ones he had on his desk.
Meet Raheem Morris here, and let him show you around the Tampa Bay Organization:
I love his energy! One of the first things he did after his first dismal season was draft Josh Freeman, which drew an extraordinary amount of criticism, because many felt that Freeman was not a marquee quarterback, because there were much higher profile quarterbacks on the block and that Morris was out-of-his mind for taking Freeman!
Most fans had the same reaction as that guy, but Raheem knew what he was doing and the Glazers trusted his decisions, even if everyone in the world thought Raheem Morris was out of his mind. In this early interview, you can see much of what Morris saw in the young Josh Freeman, a mature kid even-keeled who would not panic in the 4th quarter under pressure and would provide a stable platform all the other players could build themselves around.
Another controversial player that Raheem Morris went after which nobody understood was LeGarrette Blount, a fiery young running back from Oregon who seemed to have a very violent temper. Blount would have been drafted higher if not for this fight which would haunt him even to this very day, as sports analysts will not forget the incident. Blount is one of those people who were destined to fall between the cracks because nobody with any sort of vision would look beyond his brutal will to fight, which was mistaken as a ruthless will to win, at any cost.
I saw the game with Blount and I noticed how he squared his shoulders to invite the fight, and was not afraid. He seemed to run the ball the same way, without fear and with a fury. I saw something unique in the kid, and Morris obviously saw the same thing. But the Tennessee Titans missed this genius, because Blount’s fighting didn’t stop in the Titans training camp, again, here is a kid who will fight for every inch and does not understand what the word “quit” is. Here is Blount in just a practice where he loses his helmet and still won’t let the defense stop him, which triggers a violent exchange.
Raheem convinced the Buccaneer Organization to sign Blount as an unsigned free agent once the Titans cut him. Because Morris has such an “infectious” personality, Tampa Bay was able to get a hold of a player similar to Warren Sapp only on the offensive side of the ball. Tampa for the first time since Mike Alstott had a runner in the back-field that could pound the ball in a way the Buc fans had come to expect. Warren Sapp had the calm and cool Tony Dungy to keep Sapp from flying apart in rage. And Blount now had the bubbly and good personality of Morris to compliment his very natural aggression and provide leadership and direction so that LeGarrette Blount could be what he was built to be, one of the greatest running backs of this modern age.
LeGarrette Blount is pure, raw energy, but the credit to giving this kid a chance, belongs to Raheem Morris. Have a look at what Blount has been able to do for the Bucs.
The organization isn’t just those two guys. There are dozens of similar young people who have been quietly recruited into the Buccaneers and they are too numerous to list here. What becomes quickly apparent when studied is that Tampa Bay as a franchise recruits dynamic personalities into a static pattern established by the Glazer Family to use those dynamics to always push-off the competition within the NFL over a long period of time. It is within that statement that I am so passionate about Tampa Bay Buccaneer Football. I am not a person who cares for stats, or even individual players. I am all about dynamic patterns used to make a static pattern great, or better. (SEE THIS LINK TO UNDERSTAND WHAT I MEAN BY STATIC AND DYNAMIC PATTERNS.)In fact, even with all the great players and coaches, even when it came down to the treasured veteran linebacker Derrick Brooks, who was the ideal icon of the franchise, when he become too old to maintain the static pattern of expectation the Glazers let him go, just as they did Sapp, Lynch, Gruden and many others. It wasn’t out of disloyalty, although the fans did feel that way. It was that the Glazers put the high level static pattern of their team ahead of their loyalty to personalities. When the dynamic personalities are no longer effective, the Glazers look for new personalities to keep the Buccaneers continuously competitive.
It is true that this does hurt them at the ticket booth, as fans do fall in love with individual players, and many sports fans keep careful track of the various statistics of those players. But the Glazers have always maintained this discipline to their organization, which is unique to them. They fired my favorite coach in Sam Wyche to hire Tony Dungy. They fired Tony, even though they loved him in Tampa because Tony had stalled out and become less effective so they could hire John Gruden. And when Gruden had lost his touch with the players and become mediocre, Tampa fired Gruden, considered by many to be one of the best minds in football, to hire Raheem Morris, the young assistant who quietly absorbed all the greatness of the men who came before him. And Raheem knows that if he becomes complacent and stops bringing a dynamic to his team which protects the static pattern of quality that is expected with the Tampa Bay Franchise, he’ll be let go also. It’s not personal, but for the Glazers, they have a dedication to putting on the field at every level a quality product.
This mentality even extends to the Cheerleaders who are among the best of any NFL team. Not only are their costumes appropriate along that fine line between sex appeal, and family friendly style, but their choreography as a dance unit is top-notch, and has been since the construction of Raymond James Stadium. When attending a game at Ray Jay you will be treated to these cheerleaders who perform with precision in between plays in an overall show that is complete for the entire 3 to 4 hours you are inside that palace.
And it’s not unusual for the Buccaneer Cheerleaders to do many community events and appearances all over town exhibiting their quality performances as a dance team. The philosophy of these Buc Cheerleaders is to bring the sex appeal expected from a cheerleader in the NFL with a style and work ethic similar to a Broadway Dancer.
It’s in the details however that makes just an average organization great. It’s a multitude of little dynamics which tend to preserve the greatness of a static pattern in competition with other static patterns, and in the NFL all teams have great players and football minds that are seeking to destroy each other’s season. And in Tampa Bay if the cheerleaders don’t keep people excited about the product on the field during this epic battle between the players themselves, then the Pirate Ship that sites in Buccaneer Cove, which is a replica of a giant Caribbean Village, will. All the props in the stadium are built by the same company who builds for Walt Disney World and the Pirate Ship is one of the most unique features for a sports stadium in the entire world. There is nothing like it anywhere!
It was this Pirate Ship which earned my eternal loyalty to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Being from Cincinnati, I know the history of their stadium debacle up close, and the ironic thing is, before Paul Brown Stadium was built, the Bengals toured Raymond James Stadium for ideas, but they seemed to miss most everything in their interpretation. Raymond James Stadium is the centerpiece of activity in Tampa. When they aren’t playing football there for the Buccaneers, it might be football with the South Florida Bulls, or a Monster Truck event, or a concert, or an equestrian event, Raymond James Stadium hosts events all through the year, was built completely with community money but gives back to the community in so many ways without compromising the integrity of being the home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Raymond James Stadium is the Crown Jewel of the NFL and all sports establishments. It is the best of the best even when others have tried to copy it. The difference is most ownerships attempt to duplicate the luxury boxes and vending sales, without understanding the dynamic relationship connected to the fan experience. This is why most have failed when attempting to duplicate the success of Raymond James Stadium, home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
And this is why even when I don’t get to fly to Tampa for a game I duplicate the experience at my home on a Sunday afternoon. Because being a fan of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is about more than a football team, it’s a celebration of the success of merging dynamic quality patterns with static patterns and how that balance can be achieved successfully.
Many who know me are baffled by the fact that I love the Buccaneers so much, because I tend to read a lot and don’t seem like the type of person who would enjoy “tailgating” and cheering for a player to carry a ball across a green field to cross a little line on the ground where the team gets points. (Such a thing is rather silly in the greater scheme of things) But in truth, some of my favorite people are in Florida, and Tampa has many people in it that I call my friends, and those friendships have in common a love of the Buccaneers because their success bleeds over into other aspects of life. And I don’t give out friendship easily. But in regard to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who even over their practice field fly a giant pirate flag that looms over the players to remind them of where they are and what they are expected to do, innovation and encouragement to reach deep inside to bring out greatness is encouraged in every act exerted. You can see that flag in the next clip. When people visiting Tampa Bay fly into the International Airport if they look out the east window of their craft, that flag is the first thing they will see in Tampa Bay, for it inundates the horizon.
But the secrets to a great organization are in many of the unsung positions, and the Buccaneers value their former players, even if they let them go to avoid salary cap problems where those players become too expensive for what they bring to the field of play. They promoted the linebacker Shelton Quarles to a scout which keeps his dynamic talent under the umbrella of the Buccaneer Franchise and allows the Bucs to locate passionate players who fit into the static expectations of the organization, because if anyone knows what kind of player should be in a Buccaneers locker room or on the field, it’s Shelton.
When I was growing up, as I pointed out in another article on the Buccaneers, my nickname was “Animal.” I like Blount had a problem with fighting. I could not take a hit without fighting back and I never knew when to quit. (I still don’t) because I would be bored in life without some kind of fight or another. No coach wanted me on a football team because I never took direction well, and I had no tolerance for the politics of school football. If I had met someone like a Raheem Morris when I was 16 through 22 I might have played football for a guy like that, because Morris, and the Glazers know how to tap into those types of individuals that other organizations overlook, or take for granted who move through life on the outside of establishment. And the Buccaneers know that it is in such dynamic people who a competitive edge over an opponent can be found. So it is with that in mind that I feel an affinity for LeGarrette Blount. I can relate to the kid. It will be interesting to see how he handles success, once money finds its way to him. I hope it doesn’t change the kind of man he has a chance to be. I’m sure that Raheem Morris is having those kinds of talks with the young man.
So as we contemplate education reform, and the role of government in society, I rest my mind from the burdens of the day and dedicate my valuable time to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers whenever they play because on every occasion that I doubt the validity of an idea I can look to that organization as a symbol of how things should or could be. I see upon that organization at every single level a passion for finding a dynamic which will make them better without compromising their static quality. I see an indulgence in more than just a game, but a philosophy that not only benefits the team and ownership of the Buccaneers, but the entire community themselves. It is the entire experience of the quality achieved at all these various levels which put the smile on a face of a young boy and ignite in him a hope that anything is possible. Or it brings delight to the over-weight middle-aged man stuck in a rut in his life to see gladiators give it their all on the field of battle, or the bored mother who holds up her hands to have beads thrown upon her head from the pirate ship in Buccaneer Cove. It is an entire city that is the better for the fact that the Buccaneers guard selfishly their unique brand of football in an NFL League that is all-too-focused on quarterbacks and statistics, that they often miss the magic of the dynamic in human spirit. Too often those types upon a confounded brow wonder how such characters came to be but for someone like the Glazer family created the conditions for the unique to blossom, and capture in those weekly battles a magic which enhances the lives of thousands.
One thing you can always count on at Raymond James Stadium, is the Glazer Family will put everything they can into a Buccaneer game. And that’s what happened at the recent throwback game against the Falcons.
The uniforms were fun to look at. I am always impressed with the way they arrange the stadium during events like this. And the most notable improvements is with the cheerleaders. Their outfits are always well done and fashionable.
First class.
Too bad in Cincinnati, the Bengal organization doesn’t understand the role football plays in a city.
That’s why the Buccaneers are playing for a wild card spot just one year after completely reorganizing their team, and the Bengals can’t win if they tried. It all starts in the front office. Just like everything in life.
Leadership is contagious, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneer organization has leadership at every single position from the office to the position players. And it shows in the end result.
When I was a kid, I didn’t like the social structure of the whole business. I never liked being told what to do so I didn’t like coaches. I never liked the class structure football created either. And I never liked how weak kneed grown adults got over star athletes that were half their age. That always seem weak to me.
I played soccer instead when I was a kid, and was so aggressive that my nickname was “The Animal.” Years later I realized that I probably should have played football, because to be honest, I love war.
Football is a war game, pure and simple. It’s about ground gained, ground defended, and winning.
And with that said, my favorite football team is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Why?
I used to be a Cincinnati Bengal fan. I relate much more to the coaches and owners than I do players. And I saw a lot of myself in Sam Wyche. Sam made me appreciate football for the war game that it is.
When Paul Brown died, his son Mike wasn’t quite the same kind of man, and he didn’t like Sam Wyche. So he ran Sam out of town. And my loyalty went where Sam ended up?
Tampa Bay.
After the owner of The Tampa Bay Buccaneers died in 1995, the Glazer family took over, and brought a whole new level of attitude to football. They let Sam go which I wasn’t happy about. Wyche brought in great names like Warren Sapp, John Lynch, Mike Alstott, just to name a few, but hadn’t been able to win consistently. They sometimes won dramatically yes, but not consistently. The Glazer’s hired Tony Dungy and defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin which were a couple of people that I admired and was curious about. And between those two men, and a fantastic new football stadium, they changed the NFL.
To this day, there are more head coaches from the Tampa Bay Buccaneer organization than any other team in the NFL. Lovie Smith of the Chicago Bears, Monte Kiffin who is the defensive coordinator for USC working with his son there, Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburg Steelers, and Raheem Morris who is the current Buc coach. Those are all active coaches, not to mention the retired Tony Dungy who went on to Indianapolis to achieve more than he did in even Tampa Bay, and Rod Marinelli who didn’t have a very good time with the Detroit Lions. So they are doing many things right in that great football town.
This is my idea of an intro video to a football game.
First touchdown at the new Raymond James Stadium. I LOOOOOVE the Pirate Ship!
Always a fighting spirit.
I like the Bucs because of Tony Dungy.
I like the Bucs because of Gruden.
I Love the Bucs because of the Pirate Ship.
Redemption Awaits 2007
This is Buccaneer Football!!!!
Tampa puts everything they have into every aspect of the business.
The Announcer Gene Deckerhoff!
And I will never forget the night my wife and I were at Raymond James Stadium the night the Devil Rays went to the World Series. Glad we were there!
This video was a couple hours after the Buc game with Seattle and the tribute to Mike Alstott. It was a really exciting evening.
And this is how I bring the magic to my house every Sunday that the Buccaneers play! I enjoy the games even when they lose. Because the Bucs are always fun to watch.
With all the changes over the years, the ownership never lost their identity. Players come and go. Coaches come and go. But the owners of this team understand how to keep a good product on the field.
It’s all about passion, hard hitting, and resiliency. And not being afraid of doing the hard things to keep winning.
The Overmanwarrior 
