1976 Bucs know all about losing

TAMPA, Fla. - Pat Toomay has had enough.

For more than three decades, the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers set the modern standard for NFL futility by going 0-14. Now, Toomay would just as soon let someone else - the Detroit Lions, for example - finish winless and spend the next 30 years answering questions about sheer ineptitude.

"The luster wears off," said Toomay, a defensive end on the expansion team that was shut out five times and outscored 412-125 in the franchise's inaugural season.

"I would like the torch to be passed," he added. "At the same time, you don't want to wish that on anybody."

Several teams have flirted with winless seasons since the Bucs, wearing creamsicle uniforms and helmets bearing a winking pirate logo, were trounced by an average of almost three touchdowns a game.

The 1980 Saints were 0-14 before winning in the 15th game. The Colts went 0-8-1 during the strike-shortened 1982 season and were 0-13 on the way to finishing 3-13 in 1986. Several other teams have won one game since the NFL adopted a 16-game schedule in 1978, including last year's Miami Dolphins.

The '76 Bucs, playing in the AFC West, which eventual Super Bowl champion Oakland dominated with a 13-1 record, had a number of close calls, including a pair of 3-point losses to fellow expansion mate Seattle and to Miami.

They lost to Kansas City by 9 the following week, then dropped their last six games by an average of nearly 30 points.Defending Super Bowl winner Pittsburgh pummeled them 42-0 in Week 13, and the season ended with a 31-14 loss to New England.

Richard Wood, a hard-hitting linebacker who played for the '76 Bucs, has been following the Lions closely because he knows Rod Marinelli from the Detroit coach's days as an assistant in Tampa Bay. Unlike Toomay, who has mixed emotions after whether to root for Detroit against Green Bay this week, Wood hopes the Lions don't finish 0-16 and have to live with the humiliation of being on the wrong side of history.

Wood has empathy for the Lions but still finds it amazing that during this age of free agency and high salaries that a club is on the verge of supplanting an expansion team as the measuring stick for futility.

"I'm not saying the Lions aren't fighting," Wood said. "I know they're working hard. But come on, guys. You've got to finish. You can't just talk about it. You have to go out and do it."

Count Spurrier among those rooting for the Lions.

"I want that record," the South Carolina coach said during a recent visit to Tampa for an Outback Bowl contract signing ceremony.

"I think they'll win a game. I'm pulling for them, sure," Spurrier added. "That's the American thing to do, isn't it?"