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© St. Petersburg Times, published April 19, 2003
There's never been a better time to be a Bucs fan, and there's never been a worse time to be a Glazer family supporter.
I bet you know people who hate the windfall the Bucs reaped from the creation of the Community Investment Tax. Heck, you might even be one of those people -- completely opposed to taxpayers subsidizing a professional sports franchise.
Yet you may not be familiar with the people who voted for the tax, the folks who fully supported giving tax dollars to the team to build a new stadium.
We are, to a certain extent, the silent majority.
We voted for the tax, talked about the benefits the city gets from having an NFL team, hosting Super Bowls.
We looked at the sweetheart benefits the Glazer family received from the deal, and argued the Community Investment Tax would have never passed if the stadium deal hadn't been attached to the proposal to raise money for cops, firefighters and schools.
It is easy to rip into the rich owner and his caretaker sons. With their threats to move the team, their unfulfilled promise to pay for half the stadium, and their other public relations gaffes (see Dungy, Tony), the Glazers are an easy target. Whether it was because of the anti-Semitic mail they received days after purchasing the team, or their own personal shyness, the Glazers have never truly warmed to the community.
The difficult task for fans was to stand in the face of the criticism and champion the family, the team and the stadium.
We touted economic impact and the critics shouted inflated numbers.
We leaned on the immeasurable intangibles such as community spirit and the naysayers said balderdash.
But our best chance came with the Bucs' Super Bowl victory. Now we had the platform to boast about all of those feel-good aspects such as international exposure and being a championship town. Even the unceremonious dumping of Dungy and the 12th-hour hiring of Jon Gruden could be deemed brilliant.
The Glazers made us feel like a big-time city and no one could deny it.
Until Thursday.
That was when word came out that the Bucs are jerking around the Tampa Sports Authority and trying to squeeze some more dollars out of our local governments.
In an effort to avoid paying an annual $4.3-million tax bill, the sports authority is looking to transfer the stadium's ownership to the county, which doesn't have to pay taxes on public stadiums. The Bucs have to sign off on the deal, but are refusing to until the authority agrees to pay for additional security and insurance on the stadium.
For the life of me, I can't embrace the idea of a city and county headed for difficult times giving more money to a team worth more than $600-million.
The reasons the Glazers are asking for this money are clear: They aren't contractually obligated to pay, this is business, and they're greedy.
The Glazer Family Foundation would love for us to focus on the $100,000 they gave to the Tampa Bay Sports Commission last week, or the other charitable donations the foundation has made through the years. That's nice, but I wish I could see such things as gestures of true goodwill.
Now imagine the goodwill the Glazers would have created if they had stepped forward Thursday and said:
"We know Johnnie Byrd is in Tallahassee slashing the state budget, we know 9/11 and the Iraqi war have hurt tourism and the tax base, we know our senior citizens are talking about choosing between eating and buying prescription medicines, we know you already gave us a stadium and multiple streams of revenue, so instead of asking the city for more money -- which we could do -- we're going to assume the relatively nominal costs of more insurance and security. After all, thanks to the generosity of the city and our savvy business moves, the value of the franchise has tripled since we purchased the team."
Yes, I know. I need to come back to earth and stop living in Fantasyland. But you know, Malcolm Glazer wouldn't need to hoist the Vince Lombardi Trophy over his head to receive the cheers of this community -- if he would just show us a little bit of real love.
That's all I'm saying.
-- Ernest Hooper can be reached at (813)226-3406 or hooper@sptimes.com .