The Tampa Bay Buccaneers knew exactly what they were getting when they brought in Jon Gruden to be their seventh head coach in franchise history.
He’s young, he’s eccentric and, more importantly, he is a winner. He’s the kind of coach that every passionate NFL football fan wishes they had for their team and the type of coach that most players would ideally like to play for.
He arrived in Tampa moments after his “trade” from the Oakland Raiders and, in Gruden-like style, began going to work. They say the man wakes up at 3:17 a.m. each morning and is at the practice facility a good two hours before even the janitors show up for work.
Gruden inherited essentially the same Bucs roster that despite talent, couldn’t seem to penetrate the second round of the playoffs while under former head coach Tony Dungy.
He immediately began instilling his smash-mouth philosophy into the system, which resulted in a 12-4 regular season record and first round bye in the playoffs. He molded the Gumby-like Brad Johnson into one of the NFL’s most efficient passers and neutralized the aura of a locker room that has more egos than the Portland Trailblazers.
He took the Bucs north to Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, where Tampa’s last three seasons had ended, and brought the team their first road playoff victory in franchise history. The temperature was also below 40 degrees, which was another previous Achilles heel of the Bucs. Now Tampa Bay is in the Super Bowl for the first time.
But this comes to the surprise of absolutely no one within the Buccaneers’ organization. This was what they brought him in to do.
It’s why owner Malcolm Glazer gave up four draft picks and $8 million dollars to Oakland to haul him in. In his mind the Super Bowl was practically a guarantee once this move was made.
Not such a guarantee, however, was the fate of the Oakland Raiders and new head coach Bill Callahan. Overflowing with a roster full of Hall of Fame shoe-ins and AARP card holders, the future of one of the most storied franchises in NFL history was completely up in the air.
Callahan, who even an average football fan probably couldn’t pick out of a line-up of high school history teachers, is like bizarro-Gruden. He doesn’t talk, he doesn’t grimace and he’s certainly not nicknamed after a psychotic fictional doll. Few people knew who he was when he came to Oakland and most fans probably didn’t even find out who he was until the media started talking about how nobody knew who he was. He was actually once the offensive line coach right here in Madison under Barry Alvarez from 1990-94.
But Oakland doesn’t have a problem with the fact that Callahan doesn’t surface in the morning headlines as often as Gruden did. In fact, they prefer it this way. It diverts a certain degree of attention away from the team and paves the way for fewer distractions when preparing for a big game like Sunday.
He kept a low profile and took a backseat to Oakland’s savvy veterans and watched his team steam roll the rest of the AFC en route to the Super Bowl. Just like Gruden did what Dungy couldn’t in Tampa, Callahan did what Gruden couldn’t do in Oakland.
And so the table is set. Gruden and the team that ousted him going head-to-head in the largest sporting spectacle of the year. But forget about this ridiculously overblown and over mentioned subplot that has dominated the front page of every newspaper from Seattle to Miami. Former coach storyline aside, Sunday’s Super Bowl is still something to be giddy about. There hasn’t been this much hype heading into the NFL’s biggest game of the year in quite some time. We’re talking about the No. 1 ranked Raider offense against the No. 1 ranked Buccaneer defense.
Possibly the last game of the greatest receiver ever in Jerry Rice and the first Super Bowl for the man right behind him in Tim Brown. A pair of throw-the-ball, West coast offenses headed by two journeymen quarterbacks coming into their own late in their careers. Charles Woodson, John Lynch, Bill Romanowski, Derrick Brooks, Rod Woodson, Simeon Rice, Warren Sapp, Al Davis, Keyshawn Johnson, Rich Gannon, Brad Johnson, Jerry Porter, Mike Alstott, Rice, Brown, etc.A handful of football’s most exciting, controversial and jaw yakking talent all thrown at each other for sixty minutes to decide who will be world champion. The game even features two of the best, most eccentric kickers in the game in Sebastian Janikowski and Martin Gramatica.
The game is set in one of the greatest cities this country has to offer and it’s going to be played outdoors in the kind of weather people here could only dream of right now. Perennial hottie Shania Twain is the halftime act and the tandem of Al Michaels and John Madden have the call from the booth.
No one has to hear about the life story of Kurt Warner throughout the course of the game or even be subjected to random head shots of his wife for that matter. It’s sure to be something entertaining to watch and special to talk about. Two smash-mouth teams and two teams that embody today’s physique of modern football.
It’s a Super Bowl worth getting exciting about. Gruden Bowl or not.
