What Does It Take To Be A Buccaneers Season Ticket Holder For 40 Years?

As of Week 1 of the 2016 NFL season, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are 40 years old. Week 1 was also the birthday of the team's ungodly, unparalleled, and likely unbreakable 26-game losing streak, which began in the team's first season and stretched into December 1977.

Things have improved somewhat since then, because of course they have. However, since a 2002 Super Bowl championship—one last blowout in the age of lopsided Super Bowls—the Bucs have zero playoff wins. Before then, the franchise enjoyed only four seasons with at least 10 wins; there have been a whopping two since. Overall, this is a beige franchise, and one which lacks even the woe-is-us scrappiness of Buffalo or Cleveland. With the possible exception of the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Buccaneers may be the NFL's least indispensable franchise, as much so now as they were four decades ago. What would cause any fan to stick with this team as a season ticket holder, and to do so for four decades?

Well …Thom Stork is the CEO and president of the Florida Aquarium, and he has lived in Tampa since 1971. He boasts the rich, friendly voice of the knowing father in every romantic comedy ever made. Football history buffs might remember him as the man behind the infamous "Go for O!" shirts that were a media sensation in fall 1977, long before Twitter and Facebook were around to launch 1,000 memes.

He has been a Buccaneers season ticket holder since day one.

Stork, 68, is still in. He has willed his four 50-yard line seats to his son. "You can't give them up, you know?" he said. "Because they're going to be in the Super Bowl the next year, you know?"

I don't actually. That's why, last month, I talked to Stork about why he's still ready for some Buccaneers football—such as it is.

VICE Sports: That first game, do you have any memories?

Stork: I just remember the whole first season was abominable; it was horrible. They were not a professional football team: they were a bunch of guys that got together and played on Sunday. They had uniforms and they had Coach [John] McKay, who was a great coach. You have to look at this, they were horrible the first two seasons, but in '79 they almost went to the Super Bowl. He was able to craft a team.

It didn't take long to realize they were not a very good ball club. The whole team was lousy. They had a lousy offense, they had a lousy defense, and they had a lousy special teams. They were all making mistakes.

Did the fact that they were that bad, just historically bad, hold your interest in any kind of way?

It was more of a social event. I had friends who were season ticket holders and we would go and tailgate. The game almost became secondary to what we were doing, until we decided to go do the t-shirts. Once we did the t-shirts, which I guess was halfway through the season, we really started having some fun with that. Going to the game was more of a social experience than anything else.

Turning lemons into lemonade.

Exactly. [Laughs.] We were sitting around one day, and we came up with the idea of "Go for O!" We designed a t-shirt. We could not use the Bucs logo, we could not use a NFL logo, so we designed a pirate ship sinking and had "Go for O!" up above it. I think we each chipped in about $100 and we printed the first run of t-shirts, which was probably 50, and then we bought an ad in the Tampa Tribune. This was pre-internet; this was pre-cell phone. We used my home address, and my home phone number if you wanted to buy a t-shirt. We had people coming to my house to buy t-shirts. Two of us had sons that were less than five years old, and both of them had red wagons. We would go to the game on Sunday mornings, we'd fill the wagon up with t-shirts and we'd wander around the parking lot selling t-shirts.

Every time we made a buck, we would reinvest it in buying either more t-shirts or buying more ads in the newspaper. There was a great moment in the second season, where we had this wonderful brainchild of an idea to fly a banner over the stadium. We called the tow guy said, "How much to fly this?' and I think it was $300 to fly it. We said, "We don't want to fly it if it looks like the Bucs are going to win." He said, "Well, wait until the fourth quarter then call me." The three of us were all sitting in different places in the stadium. We got together at the end of the third quarter, and I think the Bucs were losing by 10 or 12 points. And we said, "OK, we're going to do this." So we went to a payphone. We called the guy with the tow company and said, "Fly the banner" and we flew the banner, and it got picked up by all the media locally.

We sent a t-shirt to John McKay. We understand he threw it in the trash. We sent a t-shirt to [owner Hugh] Culverhouse. We understand he never even saw it. We sent one to Johnny Carson, because Johnny Carson was continuously blasting the Bucs, and Carson actually used the t-shirt on the air. We sent a t-shirt to the Today show, and they used it. We sent a t-shirt to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and they put it in the Buccaneers display. It was there the first two seasons. We just had fun with this. We [were] totally, politically incorrect, we took a t-shirt to the game and we found a very well-endowed young lady and we said, "Would you put this t-shirt on and let us take your picture?" and, of course, she said yes. My best friend was a photographer with the Tampa Tribune and we got him to shoot it, so it was in the paper the next morning and it moved onto wire services as well.

We were three marketing guys. We were guerrilla marketing this thing all along, just having fun with it. Then when the Bucs did win, when they finally won in New Orleans, the next day in the Tribune, the whole front page was full of quotes from world-famous people, and I was one of the world-famous people. It was Thom Stork, originator of "Go for O!" and my quote was, "Well, I guess we're out of business now." [Laughs.]

Did you ever get any flak from the Bucs organization saying, "Hey guys, can you stop doing this? We don't like this?" Anything?

No, we never got anything like that.

Really?

No one ever reached out to us. I have become friends, or I did become friends, with several of the ballplayers from that era and they thought it was just a hoot.

Do you see people wearing the shirt now?

No I don't. I do run into people who say they still have the shirt, and I have one shirt left, my own shirt. You don't see anybody wearing it. It comes up every once in awhile when the Bucs are having a lousy season. Some columnists will refer to "Go for O!" I think last year there was a reference to "Go for O!"

It was fun, a lot of fun. We didn't make a dime. The end result was I think we broke even from our original investment of about $150 each, so we didn't make any money.

When you were making the shirts and selling them, did you ever think that you'd be rooting for this team and attending games 40 years later?

I was rooting for them when I went to the games, I wanted them to win. I mean, if our t-shirt went down the tube, so be it. I wanted a winning team. I've always rooted for the Bucs.

How hard is it to root for a team that is just that bad?

[Laughs.] It wasn't hard, but it wasn't easy either. You almost went to the game with the assumption that they were going to lose, because they were just so bad. Every week there were new guys on the team. Guys would quit or get hurt and they'd bring somebody else in. They were a no-name football team. With the exception of [Steve] Spurrier at quarterback, there was nobody on the team.

When you're going to a Bucs game, do you have a tradition?

No, we really don't have a tradition. We don't have a tailgate tradition. We normally get up, go to mass, and go to a game. During the course of a season if there are 10 home games, we'll probably tailgate with friends at four or five of them. Often we just get to the game about a quarter to one, the games start at one, and go in and grab a hot dog and get in our seats.

A lot of that has to do with the weather down here. Northern markets, tailgating is a big, big thing, because it gets cool, and people build fires, they have grills going. It's too damn hot down here. It's too hot until early in November. November and December, the games are great, but September, October, oh my God they're miserable, just miserable. But we go. We have a good time, and we hope for the best.

What's the Bucs' tradition?

Losing. [Laughs.]

Is that still something that you feel that the organization hasn't shaken, even though there's a Super Bowl win?

No, they haven't, they have not. Despite the fact that they won the Super Bowl, despite the fact that they've been to the playoffs a couple of times, they're still looked at as a loser. I mean, they have to win a lot more games for that impression to change. The season ticket base is pretty strong with this team. It's entertainment.

Is that what keeps you going back, the fact that it's fun, or is it something bigger than that?

It's pro football. I love seeing when the [New York] Giants come in here. I love seeing when any team comes in here, Pittsburgh. I love seeing pro football. I'm a pro football fan.

Being a Bucs fan for as long as you have, what have you learned?

Patience. You're not expecting a lot, and you're entertained by what you do see. You go home at four o'clock on Sunday afternoon and you're pissed off, you're frustrated, or you're very happy, you know? Every year brings a new season and we hope for the best.

I wish they were a Super Bowl contender every year. Yeah, I wish we had a tradition, a winning tradition. Maybe someday they will, but in 40 years we haven't seen it. I don't know what the record is, but I suspect they've had far more losing seasons than they have had winning seasons.

[Editor's note: That's true. Before the 2016 season, the Bucs have had 10 .500-plus seasons for a career record of 241-386-1]

Do you think you'll be around to see a winning tradition?

I hope so, I hope so. I'm going to keep the tickets as long as I can. [Laughs.] I keep the tickets, as I said earlier, because they're such great seats. The minute you give them up, I've always said this, the minute I give them up they're going to go to the Super Bowl. I can't give them up.

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