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Bucs' White Thinking Big For 2008

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By MARTIN FENNELLY

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 16, 2008

He knows what you're thinking.

"The fluke thing," Greg White said.

Greg White came from nowhere. He scrapped around NFL camps and practice squads and NFL Europe. He came from odd jobs, bad jobs, from way down - then the electrifying leap from Arena Football to leading the 2007 Bucs in sacks.

He tried to hold out. He wanted a big contract from the Bucs. He didn't get it.

He knows what they're thinking:

Do it again.

Greg White knows what you're thinking.

"The fluke thing. I understand where you're coming from. Everybody thinks that - one year.

"I'm thinking, how do you go from Arena, play about 30 games, and still be effective like that? I played 15 in Arena, and in the same year I played with the Bucs. How do you fluke that? How do you get 15 sacks in Arena, then come over and get eight more and seven forced fumbles?"

White smiled that smile.

"That means I've got to work that much harder - but proving people wrong has never been anything less than my life."

Diddy And Rock

Want to know what he's thinking?

"I want to be an empire," White said.

OK, so he's getting slightly ahead of himself - he isn't even sure he'll start this season, especially with the switch to left defensive end. And his coaches want him to prove he can stop the run.

But why wait?

That's what Greg White thinks.

He's bull-rushing the future.

So he has his own Web site, www.blitz91.com. So he started a charity to help kids, the Better Us Foundation.

So the personalized plate on the front of his '04 Cadillac reads TYCOON INC. He has a TYCOON tattoo surrounded by dollar signs on his left forearm.

"That's what I aspire to be, a powerful and wealthy person," White said.

Like who?

"Diddy," he said. "Or Rockefeller."

One day, he was reading about John D. Rockefeller on the computer.

"The word tycoon just jumped out at me."

So he now has an executive assistant.

He didn't have one of those last season.

"I had a cell phone and voice mail," White said with a laugh.

That laugh, that smile - he never comes across as a big-timer. He stood and stood and signed and signed for Bucs fans at training camp. It's who he is. He thinks that will help in the business world.

"Football gets me in the door. I hope my personality keeps me there."

Tiger Woods spoke to the Bucs the other day at camp. White didn't make a run at him, but admired what he saw.

"Tigers Woods - he's powerful and wealthy."

White is making $370,000 this season, an NFL pittance. Teammates kid him about the tycoon stuff, like, "Man, make a Pro Bowl once." White smiles.

His business cards are beauties, hard as credit cards. White and his son are pictured on the front. On the back, there's a chess pawn topped by a king's crown. Greg White loves chess. Here's what he's thinking:

"The pawn is the weakest piece on the board, but it always moves forward. I always want to move forward. ... You take an ordinary person, which is a pawn, and you can make him into a king."

He thinks he spent a lot of his 29 years as a pawn, missing chances, maybe on his own, maybe by partying too hard, taking things for granted. He says those jobs he took when football wasn't paying set him straight.

There was the pizza delivery job. There was the job lugging 50-pound water jugs up into office towers on Wall Street, you know, to keep the kings quenched. There was the security job a few years back at a Best Buy in Orlando. And there was five years ago, that job in the syrup factory in Ohio. For $6.25 per hour, Greg White put caps on syrup bottles. That is, until he got called in.

"You're done," his supervisor said.

White smiled, then and now.

"It wasn't what I saw myself doing," he said.

He recalled what the human resources lady told him.

"Wow, you get kicked in the teeth and you're still smiling."

It's nothing less than his life.

The Sky Above

Greg White knows what you're thinking:

The fluke thing.

Here's what Bucs defensive line coach Todd Wash is thinking:

"I don't think there's any question it's a tough transition to left end. And there's no question that he's handling it. I think he's got a burning desire to be one of the best defensive linemen in the league. That definitely motivates him. At the same time, he's a free spirit, a fun-loving guy. You need to keep the thumb on him."

Greg White's thoughts?

"The goals are to have double-digit sacks, obviously for the team to win, possibly Pro Bowl. Hey. The sky's the limit ..."

He's thinking some more:

"You want to own that dude across from you. He's got to be thinking when he goes to block, he's got to think, 'Man, I don't know what this dude is going to do next.'"

That's what we're thinking, too.

What will Greg White do next?

There's a pawn on his business card.

"And I'm ready for my crown," he said.

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