Bucs Fans Wear Team Spirit On Their Sleeves - Sort Of

Photo Gallery: Bucs Gear Sells Well

TAMPA - Just hours after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers clinched their playoff spot, the machines at VF Imagewear were cranking out the Bay area's most highly sought sports garment of the week.

With Christmas coming, it made sense for Janet Hall to give her husband and sons one of the T-shirts commemorating the Bucs as champs of the National Football Conference South.

Not that the Temple Terrace fan, who has attended games since the team's beginning in 1976, needed Christmas as reason to buy the six shirts. It's just handy timing.

"I'd buy them no matter what, just because they won, but I'll give them as Christmas presents" she said.

It seems a lot of people who came to Authentic Team Merchandise a store known as "It's Bucs & Bulls Heaven" on Tuesday wanted one of the shirts.

Butch Arenal took a day off from his job as deputy chief of police in Punta Gorda to bring his family to the store for Christmas shopping that would include the purchase division championship shirts.

It was a trip of about 100 miles each way.

Like many in the store, for Arenal, the season's slumps and successes didn't affect his interest in buying team apparel.

"We're not fair weather fans," Arenal said.

Traveling a couple hundred miles to buy Bucs gear didn't seem impressive compared with the sojourn of Kelly and Brian Wisneski, who live in Allentown, Pa.

Kelly Wisneski was raised in Tampa and took her fanship to Pennsylvania. After attending Sunday's game, they were at the store to stock up on the championship T-shirts, hats and other items that included a Bucs beach towel.

"That's a Christmas present for my wife," Brian Wisneski said.

The caps and T-shirts were in such demand that a woman called from a hospital bed to place an order, said Gerry D'Angelo, executive director of the store, which is on North Florida Avenue.

There's still no decision on whether fans will be able to score another likely hot item locally: a replica of Micheal Spurlock's jersey. On Sunday, he became the first Buccaneer to return a kickoff for a touchdown.

Reebok, which prints individual player jerseys, needs orders from fan shops such as Bucs & Bulls Heaven totaling about 300 jerseys before it will crank one out, D'Angelo said.

These are different jerseys than what are carried in general retail stores, she said.

Reebok does intend to issue a T-shirt to mark Spurlock's historic kick return, she said.

There are signs of interest in the come-from-nowhere player who ended the team's kick return futility that stretches back to its beginning three decades ago.

Joey Bruce of Tampa, who describes himself as "probably the greatest Bucs fan," would be interested in a Spurlock jersey.

D'Angelo said that minutes after Spurlock's return Sunday afternoon, someone phoned in an order for a $300 custom authentic jersey.

Though no one in the store admitted that the team's record spurred a greater appetite for Bucs stuff, demand from retailers for team gear inched up as the Bucs began to win more than lose, said Michael Johnson, head of marketing for VF Imagewear, a Tampa company the makes NFL-licensed items.

When the Bucs won the Super Bowl in 2003, the plant ran two 12-hour shifts of 100 workers 24 hours a day for a week to print more than 500,000 shirts.

The demand is far from the level of a Super Bowl, Johnson said.

"We're seeing some increases as the season goes on. It's not a bad market for the Bucs, but it's been a cautious one. No one wants to be sitting on boulders of shirts," he said.

An example might be the Chris Simms jerseys hanging on racks. Last year's starting quarterback who's out for the season.