Some Old Bucs Are Bitter (Not Pictured)

November 05, 2009 at 09:50am by Scott

This week, several old Buccaneers are getting some airtime because of the throwback game. The Bucs radio shows have already featured Lee Roy Selmon and Doug Williams, and the newspapers have interviewed guys like Richard Wood, Mark Cotney and David Lewis to get their various old-guy perspectives on the week. But now it sounds like there are some hard feelings about the Ring of Honor induction.

There apparently are some sore feelings by at least a couple of unnamed members of that ‘79 team, believe it or not, because Selmon is going into the ring by himself. No less than Doug Williams, Bucs executive and the quarterback of that team, brought that up Wednesday at a news conference to talk about the weekend’s events.

“It’s emotional. I’ve talked to a lot of guys and … a lot of them don’t understand why you’re putting (just) one guy in if you’re honoring the ‘79 team,” Williams said. “If you’re honoring Lee Roy because of his accomplishments, that’s a different ballgame. If you’re talking to the guys (from 1979) – a couple of them won’t come.”

To be honest, this whole throwback thing was handled a little sloppily from the beginning. The stated reason for doing the throwbacks and Ring of Honor induction now was to honor the 1979 team, which to me is weird to start with. I know it was a big accomplishment to go from expansion team to division winner in four years, but, umm… they were shut out in the championship game. Are they also going to honor the 1999 team somewhere down the line? That team actually scored some points in that championship loss.

So they’re doing this for the 1979 team, but Ed Glazer took great pains to specify that the throwback uniforms the current team will be wearing on Sunday are the very rare 1976 orange jerseys, not the orange from the 1979 team. He told a story about it and everything. So there’s some confusion there.

Now some members of the 1979 team are upset that only Selmon is being inducted into the Ring of Honor during this supposed celebration of that team. But the Ring of Honor isn’t for team honors. It’s for individual contributions to the team. The Bucs said as much when they announced Selmon.

As Co-Chairman Edward Glazer said last week when the team unveiled its uniforms for this season’s throwback game, “the time is right” for the Buccaneers to introduce an avenue to honor the franchise greats. And no matter when that Ring of Honor was established, Selmon was the obvious choice to go first.

And it just makes sense. When you first heard about a Ring of Honor, did you think it would be for anything except individuals? How could you seriously put, say, Tom Blanchard’s name up along side Selmon’s? Doug Williams isn’t helping.

“If you’re talking the ‘79 team then the bell cow of that football team is Ricky Bell. And he always will be. … We’re just talking ‘79. If you’re talking about a career, that’s a different ballgame. For the career, I think it’s a great honor for Lee Roy.”

Williams should have taken that opportunity, as a current employee of the Buccaneers, to clarify that the Ring of Honor unveiling is separate from the honoring of the 1979 team. They just happen to occur on the same day… in the same location… at the same time. Yeah, this probably could have been handled better.