The Tampa Bay Buccaneers Are Doing The Unthinkable

What you see in that image is exactly what it looks like. To add to the mayhem of all the throwback action that will occur with the old AFL teams,the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are bringing back their old, retro uniforms for one game this year, thus ensuing that they will lose that game. From the Tampa Bay Buccaneers website.

For a generation of Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans, the highlight reels in their heads are colored exclusively in red and pewter.

This fall, the Buccaneers will take all of their fans — those who remember the orange and white era fondly and those who have grown up in the team's recent era of success — back to the franchise's roots.

On November 8, 2009, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will wear orange for the first time in almost 13 years. In an event that Buccaneers fans have anticipated for some time, the Buccaneers will conduct their first-ever 'Throwback Game.'

Specifically, the Buccaneers will don uniforms meant to replicate the team's very first look from its inaugural season in 1976. The Florida Orange, red and white combination changed subtly over the years that followed, but the Bucs' current management conducted painstaking research in order to faithfully replicate that 1976 uniform.

The result is a nostalgic link to a past the Buccaneers wish to preserve for their fans.

There were only 26 teams in the NFL before the Buccaneers and Seattle Seahawks began play in 1976; now there are 32. At the end of that season, the Oakland Raiders beat the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl XI. Those Roman numerals have now ballooned to XLIII, the identifier of the championship game played last February in Tampa's Raymond James Stadium. The Bay area, such a new and humble part of the NFL in '76, has now hosted four Super Bowls, and its own team, the Buccaneers, won Super Bowl XXXVII in San Diego.

It was a different era that the Buccaneers sailed into in their sunshiny orange jerseys in 1976, one with 14-game seasons, teams that ran more than they threw, players who sought second jobs in the offseason and a draft that stretched for 17 rounds with no television camera in sight. It was not an era that favored expansion teams, which were forced to populate their rosters from a pool of players mostly cast off from other teams.

That led to a memorable 0-16 season for the inaugural Buccaneers, not an accomplishment to be celebrated, by any means, but not a time to be forgotten, either. That start is most notable for how quickly, in a larger sense, the franchise rose from that difficult setting; by 1979, it's fourth season, Tampa Bay was in the NFC Championship Game.

And soon, there were stars in orange and white. The 1976 season had one in the making in Hall of Fame-bound DE Lee Roy Selmon, though he was limited to five games in his debut campaign. Others would emerge: Doug Williams, Ricky Bell, Cedric Brown, Batman Wood, Jimmie Giles. Even when the team found victories hard to come by from 1983 to 1996, there were those who did the orange-clad faithful proud: James Wilder, Kevin House, Scot Brantley, David Logan, Paul Gruber, Hardy Nickerson, Mark Carrier, Ricky Reynolds and many others. Even Derrick Brooks and Warren Sapp proudly wore the orange and white for two seasons. Mike Alstott put it on for one unforgettable rookie season.

The Buccaneers actually made the NFC Championship in those putrid, cursed uniforms? Well then! I did not know that. That game on November 8, 2009 is a game against the Green Bay Packers, so if there is one certainity in the NFL this year, it is this: The Green Bay Packers will not go 0-16.