TAMPA, Fla. — This is not a round-number anniversary and, thankfully, not a tearful epilogue. Think of it more as a nod. A tip-of-the-hat to the person, the community, the era that brought us here.
We are seven weeks from another set of Super Bowl memories in Tampa Bay. This will be the fifth time the NFL’s showcase game was played here and only three markets can claim more.
If you’ve been around long enough, you probably have your own image of what a Super Bowl looks like in Tampa Bay. It could be Marcus Allen’s reverse field run, Whitney Houston’s majestic national anthem, Ray Lewis’ defiant stare or Santonio Holmes’ back-of-the-end zone grab.
But here’s another mental snapshot to consider. It’s April 24, 1974, in a ballroom at the Drake Hotel in New York. With finalists from Honolulu, Memphis, Phoenix and Seattle in the room, the NFL announces Tampa Bay has been awarded the league’s 27th franchise. The team did not yet have a name or an owner when NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle shook the hand of Tampa Bay committee chairman Leonard Levy.
“Welcome to the NFL, sir,” Rozelle said.
There was back-slapping, newspaper interviews and some pointed questioning from the other expansion finalists in the room, including Seattle which had to wait until June before getting the Seahawks. Maybe 30 minutes later, when things had quieted down, Levy found himself standing next to NFL executive, and Super Bowl architect, Don Weiss.
“So,” Levy asked, “when can we get a Super Bowl?”
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Weiss is gone now. Rozelle, too. Hugh Culverhouse, who was awarded the team later that year when the original owner backed out, passed away in 1994. Very little remains of those days, except for all the progress that was set in motion.
And standing on the sideline to see it all is Levy. Now 87, he sat down recently for lunch at Palma Ceia Golf & Country Club where former University of Miami football coach Fran Curci stopped to say hello, and Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley exchanged pleasantries, too.
As it turns out, Levy has a better record with the Super Bowl than the franchise he helped create. The Bucs were in their 27th season before playing in a Super Bowl in 2004. Levy, meanwhile, had secured a game for the old Tampa Stadium within eight seasons, and the bay area was instantly a part of a loose rotation that included Miami, New Orleans and Los Angeles.
So what did Weiss say to Levy on that fateful day in 1974?
“He said we could get a Super Bowl as soon as we got a major hotel,” Levy said. “So when they broke ground for the Hyatt downtown (in 1979) I took the story and sent it to the NFL.”
Having headed up Tampa Bay’s expansion committee in the early 1970s, Levy was a natural to run the Super Bowl committee in the early 1980s. He began by gathering 100 or so corporate executives for a meeting at the Tampa Chamber of Commerce. Everyone in this room, Levy told them, had business associates around the country. And some of those connections had to know NFL owners in every other market.
Tampa Bay’s pitch was going to be a personal one. Not just economic studies and stadium specifications, but conversations with as many NFL owners as they could possibly reach.
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The bid was far from a slam dunk. This was before Tampa began proclaiming itself as America’s Next Great City, which, in itself, suggested it wasn’t quite big-time yet. The Hyatt may have given Tampa Bay a headquarters, but there still weren’t enough hotel rooms. The league had to put its NFL Properties division in rooms near Disney World. NFL owners were sent to resort rooms at Innisbrook and Saddlebrook.
One of the proposed team hotels was a Holiday Inn that Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke would later famously squawk about.
When Rozelle told Levy the area did not have enough limousines to handle all these dignitaries at far-flung hotels, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner got a business associate in New York to guarantee his fleet of limos.
“We stretched from St. Pete and Clearwater Beach to Orlando. We even had some rooms in Fort Myers,” said Jim Steeg, who was in charge of Super Bowls for the NFL for 26 years. “We filled every room we could find. The Days Inns and Ramadas were all part of the assigned hotel rooms. It was a little bit different than what some of these people would accept now.”
Without a luxury hotel close enough on gameday, the Tampa committee had to improvise by setting up tents at what is now Al Lopez Park for corporations to wine and dine clients across the street from the stadium. That concept became a staple for corporate hospitality areas at subsequent Super Bowls.
The underlying message of all the makeshift ideas is that Tampa Bay was willing to do whatever it took to win the NFL’s trust. Weiss, who passed away in 2003, once told a reporter that Levy was “the king of volunteers” when it came to getting a community to support a bid.
So when league owners met in Detroit on June 3, 1981, there were five cities vying for Super Bowl 18 in 1984: Tampa, Pasadena, Dallas, Miami and New Orleans.
Levy used 14:30 of his 15-minute allotment for a presentation. And when Rozelle emerged from the room a couple of hours later, Tampa Bay had officially become the sixth market to win a Super Bowl bid.
“LA. New Orleans. Miami. Tampa? How does that happen,” Levy joked all these years later.
Tampa Bay would go on to get Super Bowls in 1991, 2001, 2009 and now 2021, with Levy running the show for three of the first five. He said his counterpart in New Orleans would often complain that every time Tampa Bay made a bid, they upped the ante for everyone else to follow.
Still, it’s not the memories of bids or even the Super Bowls themselves that Levy thinks about these days.
It’s the after-effects he sees every day around Tampa.
“I don’t mean for this to sound egotistical because there were so many people were involved, but this town changed when we got an NFL franchise,” Levy said. “People said, ‘Wait a minute, if they have an NFL franchise, there’s got to be something going on there.’ And when we got the Super Bowl, people understood that we were big enough to host the Republican convention and any other event that came along.
“I sincerely believe, and I’m not totally objective, but I believe getting the NFL franchise did an awful lot to help this city grow.”
