Joe Henderson
The Tampa Bay area will mostly grind to a halt by kickoff Sunday at the Super Bowl. Televisions throughout Tampa, St. Pete, Clearwater, Sarasota, Lakeland, and, oh just about everywhere around here will be tuned to CBS’ coverage.
Bucs fans will complain that CBS announcers Jim Nantz and Tony Romo hate the Bucs. Kansas City fans will convince themselves that Romo and Bucs quarterback Tom Brady are secret lovers.
No matter which team they follow, fans on both sides will be furious because their lads don’t get enough respect.
At the core of it all is this fact: When your team is in the Super Bowl, it can unite a city like nothing else. I saw that in 2003 after returning home from covering Tampa Bay’s smashing Super Bowl victory over Oakland. I arrived just in time as thousands of people lined Bayshore Boulevard to give the champs a proper salute.
I’ve lived here nearly 50 years and I never saw anything like that day.
This was after more than 65,000 people went to Raymond James Stadium to greet the Bucs on the night they got back from beating Philadelphia in the NFC Championship Game.
A mass celebration like those two can’t happen this time if the Bucs win, and we know why. However, that doesn’t mean the passion and joy will be any less.
Now, imagine all those feel-good vibes happening in another city. Imagine Tampa Bay without the Buccaneers.
It almost happened.
Without a decision nearly 25 years ago by Hillsborough County voters to tax themselves to keep the Bucs from moving, it likely would have happened.
The Community Investment Tax was a half-percent sales tax hike that promised to fund needed improvements in public safety, education, infrastructure, and, always at the end, what organizers called “a community stadium.”
The stadium was a no-compromise demand from the Bucs then-owner Malcolm Glazer. Build it, or he would move the Bucs – probably to Cleveland, which had just lost the Browns.
I was the lead reporter on the tax story for the Tampa Tribune. The ups and downs of that saga went on for more than a year. It essentially split the county down the middle. Glazer dictated more than he negotiated. He demanded complete control of the stadium and most of the revenue it generated, even from outside events.
He was unyielding.
The more Tribune readers saw about what Glazer wanted, the more pronounced the civic divide became. When leaders and the Bucs finally agreed on lease terms, I always speculated that it was because Glazer ran out of things to ask for.
The issue still needed voter approval, though, and it got that on Sept. 3, 1996.
By a 53%-47% margin, with record voter turnout, the tax passed.
Critics today still complain about that outcome, but they miss the point. Only a year before, voters soundly rejected basically the same issue – but without a stadium.
I’ll always believe voters decided what the heck, we want football.
I think of that every time the Bucs win a big game or have a strong season. I think of that celebration on Bayshore, and what sports does for the Tampa Bay area. Only a few months ago, the Lightning gave supporters some light the darkness of the pandemic by winning the Stanley Cup.
The Tampa Bay Rays did the same thing by winning the American League pennant and advancing to the World Series.
Now, it’s the Bucs’ turn to take center stage, with one more chance to prove what a season like this can do for a city. However, without the community buy-in all those years ago, Tampa might never have known.
