That time the Buccaneers misspelled Mike Alstott's name at his retirement ceremony

With Mike Alstott entering the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' Ring of Honor this year, people keep digging up old anecdotes and thoughts on the best fullback the team has ever had. And with yesterday's misspelling of "Mike Evens" commenter Never Odd or Even reminded us of a pretty good misspelling: when the Bucs first honored Mike Alstott in a retirement ceremony in 2008, they misspelled his name on one of the two jerseys he was presented with.

Here's a screenshot from his retirement ceremony on NBC's Sunday Night Football.

That was actually intentional: apparently it was a reference to when the Bucs misspelled Alstott's name in his first two games as a Buccaneer in 1996, when they were still wearing those creamsicle jerseys, per the Orlando Sentinel's reporting at the time (via The Pewter Plank).

But the misspelling was not actually an error. In Alstott's first season, 1996, his jersey had his name misspelled for each of his first two games before the error was finally corrected. So, in commemorating the past, the Bucs decided to dot all the i's but leave off one ‘t.'

I went back and checked the first two regular season games Alstott played for the Bucs, and his name was spelled correctly there -- so this must be referring to his preseason games, which I unfortunately do not have lying around. If anyone has a screenshot or photograph of his jersey in those games, I'd love to see it.

Still, this is a pretty cool bit of trivia.