With 16 wins over the past four seasons, I'm getting the feeling about the Bucs that I had back during the dark days of Hugh Culverhouse. Accordingly, I want to arbitrarily select a year from that grim period and remind us all of what, for so many years, has been the essence of Buc Football.Autumn, 1991.An angry, middle-aged man sits a few rows in front of us.“Come on, you Bucs!” he yells angrily. “Come on, YOU BUCS!”He uses the word “Bucs” like a particularly ugly obscenity - the kind you reserve for truly bad people who deserve to be offended.He has paid good money for his seat. Indeed, his is better than ours. (We’re on the 48 yard-line, just seven rows from the Bucs’ bench.)The Bucs are in the middle of a 3-13 season - by no means the worst season they’ve had. We are being subjected to Bad Ball, a specialty of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.Pretty much all of us in this area of the stands are regulars - we have season tickets (or, in my case, my dad has season tickets, and I get to use them). Each of us has his own way of coping with Bad Ball.There’s the angry guy in front of us, who’s scolding the Bucs.My friend and I use Bad Ball as a prism through which to take a humorous view of the football world. This season, our main entertainment is watching Eugene Marve, a compellingly mediocre linebacker, screw around on the sidelines. We are most delighted when something bad happens to the Bucs and Marve smiles. Too bad Marve couldn’t sit with us (in full uniform) up in the bleachers. I think he knew what we knew.And then there’s the Dexter Contingent. Late in the summer, Dexter Manley joined the team. The old Redskins defensive end had once been a ferocious pass rusher, but drugs and other trappings of a dissolute lifestyle had led him to the Bucs. (If you were a good player who spent time with the Bucs, you were usually a guy who was with the Bucs before the productive part of your career or after.)The Dexter Contingent amuses itself by calling out to Dexter.“Dexter!” a man yells. Manley sits unmoved on the bench, staring out onto the field.“Dexter!” another voice yells. Manley doesn’t flinch.“Dexter!” a woman yells in a voice that somehow conveys her youth and good health. The great pass rusher turns his body toward the stands to better understand the situation.This whole situation is the essence of Bad Ball. Bad Ball is a great, gray mass in which you remember the silly and the trivial, but you forget the stuff that was supposed to be important. I have no idea who the Bucs were playing that day. I’m confident the Bucs lost that day, though I have no proof. Talk to a fan of a championship team and you get the specifics you’d associate with a straight news story - important details on the opposing team, the exact score, and pivotal plays that are likely to live in perpetuity with NFL Films.Talk to a fan whose team practices Bad Ball and you get the opposite - the trivial and the absurd. If you’re a fan of a team like the Bucs, it’s likely that many of the plays you remember are plays that the players themselves wish you forgot.As Leo Tolstoy would have said had he lived in Tampa, “Championship teams are all alike; every Bad Ball Club is Bad in its own way.”
