Chapter One

We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. 2 Corinthians 4:8-9

IT WAS TIME. I figured I had waited long enough. Darkness had fallen on that winter evening, two days after our team's business had concluded for the season. The building was otherwise deserted as I pulled up and parked at the small wooden shack guarding the entrance to One Buccaneer Place.

One Buc, as we all called it, stood quiet. The one-story, stucco and concrete block building was located on the edge of the Tampa International Airport. The color of butter pecan ice cream, this was the original building that housed the newly formed Buccaneers in 1976. Rather than expand the building as the organization exploded in size over the years-as personnel were added for coaching, scouting, marketing, public relations, ticketing, and other functions-the Bucs had simply added a series of trailers on the other side of a small parking lot in the late 1990s. The trailers were collectively known as Two Buc.

Oscar, the guard on duty, escorted me through the locked gate on the side of the building; my security code no longer worked. Silently I gathered six years' worth of my professional life from my office-three-ring binders with notes, play diagrams, and play-calling sheets; various books and photographs; my sons' video games; and a couple of Buccaneers h