Back in February I ran a poll on whether this fan base thought the Tampa Bay Buccaneers should have a Ring of Honor, 90% of the fans voted yes to the idea. Several of you have clamored to construct our own Ring of Honor… Well let’s do it.
I think we should construct it as such: The organization only spans back to 1976, so rather than picking one player every 8 years as previously suggested, let’s pick player(s) from each decade (in other words segment it to the 70’s, 80’s, and so forth). I know a couple of you worried about having a Ring of Honor of over 50 strong, with a overall team record of (196-303-1) I don’t think we’ll have that problem, though I could be wrong. I’m open to criteria for the Ring of Honor as well, but I figured we would just go on statistics and fan recognition. If you want it more sophisticated we can do that.
I wanted to preface this task with the fact that I’ve been a fan since 1996 (13 years old). Prior to that I was enamored with the Cowboys and 49ers, who wasn’t? Over the past 12 years I’ve been a huge Bucs fan. I still have nightmares of Trent Dilfer lining up behind the center to play QB, why I ask? At any rate, I’m not the end-all-be-all to Buccaneers history and I look forward to learning a lot about the past greats who played for the Bucs. With this task I’ll be relying on a lot of you older Bucs fans, as the stats don’t always paint the perfect picture. I would hate to gloss over deserving players due to them not having the best stats. This is our Ring of Honor, not a computer generated "This is who you will honor" dictatorship so hopefully you guys get involved in the process. At the very least I know people will vote…
If you would like a point of reference in terms of statistics and mainly for who even existed and played well back in the day, be sure to checkout Pro-Football-Reference.
Alright so the tires have been kicked on this thing so start brainstorming. Maybe we’ll tackle a decade a week? We’ll see how it goes and play it by ear. We’re starting with a shortened time span however, from 1976-1979… Let’s add our suggestions for the 76’-79’ Class in the comments section, try and back up your suggestion with reasons for entry. Once we have our selections I’ll throw up a poll on the site and we’ll vote those worthy into the Bucs Ring of Honor…..