FAB 4. It All Began With The Pre-Draft Issue In 1996

The year 2020 marks my 25th season covering the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for you, the loyal PewterReport.com reader. As I begin this milestone season, I’m going to spend the next 25 weeks telling some never-before-told Bucs stories and recalling some of my most memorable moments in my professional journey.

I spent my childhood in Overland Park, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City, and grew up watching college football on Saturdays and NFL football on Sundays. I’ve always loved the draft because that’s where college football and the NFL merged together. I remember when the draft was only covered on ESPN and ESPN2 on Saturdays and Sundays back in the 1980s. My birthday is April 23, and the draft would sometimes land right on it. When that happened I thought of it as the NFL’s birthday gift to me.

One such year was my junior year of high school in 1989, and my high school girlfriend came over to surprise me that morning and asked me what I wanted to do for the day. I told her that I wanted to head down to the basement and watch 10 hours of NFL draft coverage – obviously!

Naturally, that didn’t go over too well with her as she stormed off and left me alone that day, but it wasn’t enough for her to break up with me, thankfully.

After graduating from Kansas State University in 1995 I moved to Tampa to begin my career covering the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for Buccaneer Magazine. Jim Henderson, who worked for the Tampa Tribune as a writer, was moonlighting as the Buccaneer Magazine editor-in-chief at the time, and upon my arrival he was hired as the public relations director for the new Tampa Bay Mutiny soccer franchise. Bob Bellone, who also worked at the Tribune as a writer replaced Henderson for the 1995 season, and I served as the Bucs beat writer that year, in addition to selling ads.

Bellone left at the end of football season and that created a void. The former publisher, Jeffrey Neil Fox, instructed me to find a replacement for Bellone. I decided to call Gary Shelton, a columnist at the St. Petersburg Times, whom I had met during my first year covering the team, and ask him for any recommendations. Shelton always had an abrupt, gruff demeanor about him, and after we spoke for a few minutes he said, “I don’t have anyone to recommend to you, Scott, why don’t you just do it?”

Secretly, I had always wanted to run Buccaneer Magazine from the editorial side, but for some reason, Fox didn’t think I was ready at age 25 to handle it, even though I had written for Wildcat Weekly a similar K-State sports magazine for three years in college, covering football and basketball.

I didn’t like the homer, cheerleader-style of writing that had gone on previously at Buccaneer Magazine and wanted it to be more objective, straight-up reporting on the team without the sugarcoating that was often applied. Fox and I would end up butting heads on my more critical approach on more than one occasion, as he would often say to me that the Bucs will win five or six games a year, and out of 24 issues, including 20 weekly issues during the season, our subscribers would only get about five or six issues with good news in it as a result if we didn’t take more of a rah-rah, cheerleader approach.

After a week I told him that I couldn’t find anybody else that could do the job, but that I could. It was late March and we were coming up on the pre-draft issue, which was always a big, highly-anticipated issue for subscribers. I wanted to be in charge of the pre-draft issue because I loved the draft. I got my wish and a pay raise, and became the editor-in-chief of Buccaneer Magazine in April of 1996.

Former Bucs Regan Upshaw, Hardy Nickerson and Chidi Ahanotu – Photo by: Getty Images

It felt good to nail my first ever mock draft as I predicted Regan Upshaw going to the Buccaneers in the first round, while both the local papers – the Times and the Tampa Tribune – had linked Alex Molden, a cornerback from Oregon, to the Bucs instead. Nailing Upshaw gave me confidence and instant credibility.

But my confidence would take a hit a few months later during Bucs training camp at the University of Tampa in August. The media had a small work room and I remember walking out to use the restroom. When I returned, Hubert Mizell, who was the main columnist at the Times, was holding up a Buccaneer Magazine training camp edition and waving the tabloid-sized newspaper in the air while holding court with the other dozen reporters in the room.

Mizell was making fun of Buccaneer Magazine – and out of a scene from a movie – everyone stopped laughing one-by-one as they saw me walk up right behind him, perhaps feeling a little embarrassed for me. Mizell didn’t realize I was behind him until the laughter stopped completely, and then turned around to look at me and said, “Oh … sorry” in a real asshole way. I never liked Mizelle and his pompous attitude. 

Now I just despised the guy.

To be fair, some of what Mizell was saying was right. Buccaneer Magazine was a bit of a joke because of its rah-rah approach to covering the team. It was viewed as a fan rag before I arrived, and I can say that because I was a former subscriber and used to read it back at K-State.

But damn it, I had just published a good pre-draft issue, a good post-draft issue, and a good training camp issue with a different approach, one that was more hard-hitting and objective from an analysis standpoint. I was determined to make Buccaneer Magazine a more credible source for Bucs news and do my own independent reporting. I wanted to report on Bucs-related things that were not in the Times and Tribune, despite being at a serious disadvantage because my publication only came out once a week instead of daily.

And BucMag.com wouldn’t debut until two years later in 1998.

The late Hubert Mizell

My confidence was immediately shaken and I was thoroughly embarrassed because Mizell did have a reputation and clout with the local media. I was so mad that I snatched the training camp issue out of his hand, called him an asshole, and stormed out the back door to head outside to cool off.

At age 25, I was the youngest reporter covering the Bucs at the time. Rick Stroud, who was the junior writer to Don Banks at the Times, was a few years older than me, as was Pat Yasinskas, who is the junior writer to Nick Pugliese. Yasinskas followed me outside and sat down and talked to me for a few minutes. He called Mizell a pompous ass, and told me not to listen to him. Yasinskas told me he had read the training camp issue and that it was really good, and he could tell I was trying to do something different with my coverage of the team. He also said he read the pre-draft issue and noticed that I had nailed Upshaw, and that it would take some time, but my credibility would grow with more solid reporting like I had done over those few months.

Yasinskas gave me a big-time confidence boost that day, and I vowed to make Buccaneer Magazine, which was renamed Pewter Report in 2002, a real force in the Tampa Bay area and nationwide when it came to covering the Buccaneers.

It took several years for that to truly happen. The local newspapers were the kings of media coverage when I first started in 1995, and Buccaneer Magazine was the low man on the totem pole back then. The media trailer at the old One Buc Place used to have writers from the Bradenton Herald, the Lakeland Ledger, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel, as well as the St. Petersburg Times and Tampa Tribune.

 One by one they fell, and in next week’s SR’s Fab 5, I will discuss in more detail how we were able to gain an even footing with the mighty local newspapers and help change the way the Bucs were covered.

Today, the only newspaper left covering the Buccaneers on a regular basis is the Tampa Bay Times. 

The other original papers have either folded, as the Tampa Tribune did when the Times bought them out, or they don’t have the money and resources to provide a beat writer for Bucs coverage.

Bucs legendary FB Mike Alstott

As I enter my 25th year of covering the Bucs for Pewter Report, we’re still going strong – thanks to YOU, our loyal readers – many of whom are former Buc Mag/Pewter Report subscribers – and our terrific advertising partners, who help fund PewterReport.com.

And thanks also to Mizell’s snarky, rude comments about me and my publication. Those comments have fueled me for over two decades and gave me a big chip on my shoulder that I still have today. Thanks, Hubert – may you rest in peace.

Stay tuned for another Bucs story from yesteryear in next week’s SR’s Fab 5. And if you missed my previous Bucs memories from the past 24 years of covering the team, click on the links below.

SR’s Bucs memories 1-of-25

SR’s Bucs memories 2-of-25

SR’s Bucs memories 3-of-25

SR’s Bucs memories 4-of-25

SR’s Bucs memories 5-of-25

SR’s Bucs memories 6-of-25

SR’s Bucs memories 7-of-25

SR’s Bucs memories 8-of-25

SR’s Bucs memories 9-of-25

SR’s Bucs memories 10-of-25

SR’s Bucs memories 11-of-25