The 1976 Buccaneers Should Remain The Crappiest

I stumble across about a dozen or so articles like this every day now. It started a few weeks ago when the Dolphins got to 0-5 or 0-6. Reporters everywhere were comparing them to the 1976 Buccaneers and speculating if they would be the first team to lose every game in a season since the Bucs did it. I have to admit, it would be nice to see another team share the humiliation when some football show brings up the worst teams in NFL history. Whenever a new follies show is produced, that Buccaneers team is the first one they look at along with clips of their receivers dropping passes or Louis Carter getting stuffed in the backfield or some other sad display. If the Dolphins were to do it, that kind of publicity would be cut in half at least.

On the other hand, it gives reporters a reason to talk to the players from that team again and recall old stories that may not have been published elsewhere. In this article they talk to Pat Toomay, who was a defensive end for the Bucs in 1976. He also happened to write On Any Given Sunday, the source material for Oliver Stone's version.

"After three games, [coach] John McKay stopped talking to us as a team. We would just have position meetings. He had made a lot of comments when he took the job that offended a lot of people. Like saying he could coach in the NFL from an armchair in his office. He paid for that."

I've read other recollections recently, too. Most of them are from guys that we hear from a lot... Lee Roy Selmon, Richard Wood, Steve Spurrier. They all talk about that year as being very difficult, but they reflect on it with a kind of warmth and gratitude that you usually don't associate with being the worst at anything. They all say they learned a lot about teamwork and, if nothing else, they appreciated their lives after football more. Not like the 1972 Dolphins who have become bitter, miserable people that spend the first several weeks of each football season wishing bad things on their NFL descendants. Their champagne celebrations are notorious by now as they toast the last team to finally lose a game and preserve their status and, more importantly, their egos. I mean, have you heard Larry Csonka or Manny Fernandez lately? God damn they're grizzled. Mercury Morris went so far as to write a rap song about that season and how you'll never, ever have another one like it.

NOW LET ME END THIS CONVERSATION WITH SOME FRIENDLY ADVICE
SOME THINGS THAT HAPPEN ONCE IN A LIFE, THEY WON'T HAPPEN TWICE
SO DON'T TRY TO RUN THE TABLE; CAUSE BY YOU, THAT CAN'T BE DONE
YOU SEE, THE 16 STRAIGHT IN '72, WAS JUST TO PLAY IN ONE

Dickwad. It's pretty obvious that you gain more character from losing than from winning. Someone should ask Larry Ball, who actually played for both teams, who he likes hanging around more these days.

Anyway, I suppose if it means that newspapers pull these old guys out for display every now and then and hit them up for some old stories, it's worth being branded with the record. The Super Bowl win kind of erased some of the shame that was attached to it through 2001. Now we can all look back on it with that embarrassed nostalgic feeling, like how you looked in the 80s. Well, how I looked in the 80s, anyway.

If you care to learn more about the 1976 Buccaneers, Bucpower.com has a whole section dedicated to them.