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Throwdown: Bucs vs. Colts

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By The Tampa Tribune | The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 5, 2007

Each week during the season, The Tampa Tribune will challenge a columnist from the Bucs' opposing city to a Throwdown, to determine the superior city - and which team will come out ahead. This week's Throwdown features the Tribune's Joe Henderson against Todd Golden of the Terre Haute Tribune-Star. (Who's the winner? Be sure to vote, and to comment below).

Bucs: Time To Pyle On

JOE HENDERSON, The Tampa Tribune

Let's get something up front, OK? Tony Dungy couldn't cut it here. You're basically dining on our leftovers, even if Dungy finally won a Super Bowl last year after about a zillion tries.

We'll give him credit for learning from Jon Gruden's blueprint.

You know, Gruden - the guy who won the big one with Dungy's players after Dungy couldn't win it with Dungy's players.

Oh ... stop me and do it quickly! I am making fun of Tony Dungy and I'm pretty sure that's a felony in at least two states. Yes, even in a forum where we're supposed to talk smack, we still love the bald man with the gentle countenance in Tampa, almost as much as y'all do back home in Indiana. I'm already having guilt pangs about those first three paragraphs.

Forgive me, Tony, for I have sinned.

Besides, Indiana has so much better material for fun-poking, starting with Jim Nabors. Please explain.

And, fess up: A lot of you feel Bobby Knight was done wrong, don't you?

I also hate to bring this up, y'all being the home of "Hoosiers" and all that, but the last two national basketball champs came out of the swamps of Gainesville and the University of Florida. The last national football champ, too.

By the way, how's Notre Dame's football season going? Probably not as well as the South Florida Bulls' season.

Yes, Indiana is a lovely place if you're into flat land and cornfields that stretch for 200 miles. Those hayrides on Saturday nights must be a hoot. Cato June thought so much of your state that he couldn't wait to leave so he could come to our 'burg.

Speaking of Cato June, the Bucs and your Colts will play a football game Sunday. I know you think the Colts are going to win. Frankly, I think the good folks in Indiana are reading too much into the whole "Super Bowl followed by a 4-0 start the next season" thing.

You haven't seen the likes of Earnest "Mr. August" Graham, who'll fill in for Cadillac Williams. Or Donald Penn, who'll start at left tackle in place of Luke Petitgout and will show Dwight Freeney ... um, I'll get back to you on that one.

Yeah, we know the Colts are good. Peyton Manning is a great quarterback when he isn't doing commercials. Dungy is a great coach when he isn't writing books or carrying stone play books down from the mountaintop. Since their full attention likely will be on football Sunday, we'll call this one 27-21, Colts, inside your sissy domed stadium with the fake grass.

Feel good about yourselves for three hours. You might win the game but we still get to live in paradise. Drop us a card when the first snows fall.

And by the way - Tony Dungy kept his house here. He is coming back here to live when he quits coaching. Just thought you'd like to know.

COLTS: Hey Bucs, Thanks For The Impatience

TODD GOLDEN, Terre Haute Tribune-Star I'm in a bind.

The fine folks at the Tampa Tribune have invited me to write a column that pokes some good-natured fun at the Buccaneers and explain why the Indianapolis Colts will win Sunday's game.

The latter is child's play, the former is vexing.

Put yourself in my shoes. How on earth can anyone work themselves into a tizzy over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers? The awesomely boring, non-descript Tampa Bay Buccaneers? The Bucs are so … harmless.

Where have you gone Keyshawn Johnson? Warren Sapp? A nation turns its hating eyes to you. When those guys donned the storied pewter-and-red, the Bucs could get your dander up. Now the Bucs are just there. Anathema to fantasy football owners and national television alike, Bucs spite just doesn't feel right.

There's so little to base bitterness on, past or present. What are the most seminal moments in Bucs history? There's the Super Bowl XXXVII victory, the botched field goal snap from the winless 1976 season that NFL Films shows ad nauseam, and the footage of ESPN's Chris Berman catching a pass during an early 1980s Bucs training camp report from those seemingly bi-weekly SportsCenter retrospectives that never, ever get old. That about covers it.

When one of the most indelible images in Bucs' history is being sucked into the vortex of Berman's ego, pity is the appropriate emotion, not rancor.

The Bucs are so dull they replaced their original, uber-virile creamsicle uniforms with … pewter? Fun fact of the day: 90 percent of pewter's composition is tin and it's apparently quite malleable. I suppose that's apropos given the Bucs' malleability down through the years.

Bucs owner Malcolm Glazer – I'm not up on my TV history as much I should be, so I could be off-base thinking he portrayed Winchester on M*A*S*H* before he grew his beard – figured it out.

The Bucs are so soul-crushingly drab he had to blow $1.4 billion on a soccer team just to liven things up. Oh, but I'm certain the Bucs are still his first love. When Glazer's globe-trotting and introduces himself, I have no doubt he says he owns the Bucs first and throws out an off-hand, 'Oh yeah, did I mention I own Manchester United too?'

There's not much meat on the bones as far as bad blood between the Colts and Bucs. Where's the common trash-talking ground? Do fans go toe-to-toe over failed No. 1 draft picks? Do the Bucs call Trev Alberts only to have Colts' fans raise Bo Jackson?

Upon further reflection, there is that Monday Night Football game in 2003, when the Colts scored 21 points in the final three minutes at Raymond James Stadium for an eventual 38-35 overtime victory. That el foldo might be singularly responsible for the Bucs' defense of that era not getting its all-time due with the likes of the 1985 Bears and 2000 Ravens. In a Peyton Manning flash, the national reputation of those Bucs went the way of N*Sync and their boy band ilk. The Bucs' legacy is so 2002.

Then there's the shared history with Tony Dungy. I'm sure you're well aware by now that Dungy is gunning for a third Super Bowl. Jon Gruden gets the credit for the Bucs' victory in Super Bowl XXXVII, but everyone knows he lived in the house Dungy built. Colts fans thank the Bucs everyday for their Dungy impatience.

As to why the Colts will win Sunday, that's easy. The Bucs' devastating injury means more than the Colts' devastating injuries. That and Manning is smarter than the Bucs. He might be smarter than us all.

Contrast the reactions of both teams to the worst injuries in last Sunday's games. When Cadillac Williams suffered his unfortunate knee injury, the Bucs gathered around Williams en masse and saw their stricken teammate off the field. An unquestionably classy move, but it had such a heavy vibe. The tricked out golf cart that Williams rode off the field had a funeral hearse feel to it, the Bucs balance on offense riding off into the sunset with him.

When Marvin Harrison got hurt, Manning didn't bat an eye. In the few minutes Harrison was down, my educated guess is that Manning translated the theory of relativity from its original German, had a quick chuckle when he thought of an ad-lib for his next commercial, and surmised it would be a good idea to split tight end Dallas Clark wide to befuddle Denver's cornerbacks. Manning's smarts are non-pareil. I wouldn't put it past Manning to outwit a defense with myself and Chris Hovan at receiver.

The Colts will win Sunday and the Bucs will drift back, cicada-like, into the woodwork. But fret not Bucs fans. Dungy's a class act and I'm sure he'll have some nice things to say about Tampa after he's done lifting the Lombardi Trophy for the Colts again in February.

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