From its modest beginnings at the AFL-NFL Championship Game in Los Angeles in 1967, through to this year’s Super Bowl XLIV, Super Sunday has grown exponentially and, in the process, has become a bloated monster. Over the past quarter century or so, Super Sunday has illustrated the ability of a sporting event to offer a distorted and exaggerated version of social reality and social values in America, and it has done so on a grand, glorious and obscene scale.

It is difficult to say precisely when the Super Bowl reached larger-than-life proportions, but certainly by the end of the 1970s it was there. At Super Bowl XV in 1981, a New York Times headline claimed that 70,000 fans made “New Orleans Throb with Super Bowl Mania.” Gerald Eskenazi’s account described a “gridlock” of people in the French Quarter and an influx of “tens of millions” of dollars into the New Orleans economy.

The extravagances of the fans and everyone associated with the game had reached extraordinary proportions. Only the vocabulary created by Thorstein Veblen, the Norwegian-American economist who tracked the habits of the rich in the late 19th century, was capable of fully capturing the scene with such brilliant phrases as “conspicuous consumption,” “conspicuous leisure” and “conspicuous waste.”

The fact that all of this takes place around a football game would have delighted Veblen, who once observed that football is to education as bullfighting is to agriculture. Indeed, Veblen’s use of the phrases “predatory barbarism,” “pecuniary emulation” and “vicarious consumption” also seem particularly well suited to any description of our distinctive national holiday.

One of the most common measures of excess has been the price of commercial time. At the first Super Bowl, a 30-second commercial sold for $42,500 on CBS and $37,500 on NBC (both networks broadcast the game). By the early 80’s, the price for 30 seconds reached $400,000, and by the end of the decade it was a whopping $800,000. Thirty seconds of advertising reached the $1 million mark in 1995 and climbed to $2.1 million in 2000. In 2007, the price tag was $2.6 million, and estimates for this year range from $2.6 to $3 million.

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December closed with a remarkable flurry of headline sports stories. It was not only one for the memory bank, but it may have been the most fitting way to end the decade known as the Naughty Aughties. What seemed like an awkward tag at the beginning of the new century has become a most appropriate signature phrase.

The first shock was the fall from grace of the poster boy for clean living and family values. Tiger Woods instantly went from the slickest brand in the American pantheon of commerce to the butt of jokes and ridicule.

IMG, the International Management Group, had persuaded nearly all major sport corporate sponsors that Woods was their man: the perfect golfer with the perfect image, the quintessential sportsman. Everybody loved Tiger, admired Tiger, wanted to be like Tiger.

We all got on board, even though we should have known better. America still wants its sports heroes cut from the Frank Merriwell at Yale mode, and Tiger Woods of Stanford looked like one of them.

Instead, Tiger is the perfect hollow man, lacking a center and lost without a compass — except for the one on his yacht that has become his shelter from the firestorm.

Typical in cases like this, the media that touted the Tiger Brand as the genuine article turned with fury and self-righteousness on its former model of perfection. Even more amusing is how quickly the corporate world cut its ties to the feline philanderer.

Accenture, one of the major corporations that identified its brand with his brand, quickly began removing all images of Woods from company advertisements. Tag Hauer, the Swiss luxury watchmaker, announced it would scale down its association with Woods. Procter and Gamble lowered their Tiger profile by withdrawing its Gillette ads featuring Woods. Then AT&T pulled the plug on its Woods connection.

Only Nike has remained completely faithful, with Phil Knight saying that this whole thing was but a minor blip. There have been no TV commercials featuring Woods on television since late November. Tiger Woods has vanished from public view and from the branded world in which we live. It is doubtful, however, that sex has disappeared from the PGA tour or other sporting venues.

Sex and sport are inextricably linked. Faux sex surrounds all our sporting events, where young women called “cheerleaders” and “dancers” decorate the landscape with wiggles, jiggles and giggles passing as a cross between glamorous role models and purveyors of sexual titillation. Then there’s the real sex, as women make themselves available to athletes, and star athletes take it as a perk of the position.

The Tennessee Hostess Scandal is an adjunct to the Tiger Woods affair. Sending young women from the University of Tennessee out to a high school football game on a recruiting trip is about as bad as it gets. The stories of attractive young women traveling hundreds of miles to see and be seen with naïve high school athletes who are targets on the football recruiting board point to issues of sexual access and the insane pressures surrounding intercollegiate athletics.

Such insanity was on display in Florida recently as Urban Meyer, head football coach and minor deity, announced his retirement from coaching, citing his health. An outpouring of grief and angst flowed throughout Gatorland. Then Meyer reversed his decision. He will now take a leave of absence until he gets control of his world. This is comparable to most of us giving up breathing until we could live without having to do it constantly.

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When is the right time to leave? Some wait too long, others leave too soon. Some go out on top, some tarnish their legacy before letting go.

For those who have followed Florida State University football over the past three decades, the last few years have been painful. Bobby Bowden, one of the great football coaches and entertaining personalities of the coaching world, joined the long list of those who stayed too long. In the last five years, it became increasingly apparent that Bowden had relinquished day-to-day control of the football program. He seemed to have lost almost all interest in that aspect of coaching — and perhaps most of the other obligations of a college football coach.

The result has been a decline in FSU’s football fortunes and a growing number of fans and boosters calling for Bowden’s retirement. As the voices became louder and more insistent, Bowden became defensive, until he most recently resembled a wounded animal. His defense of his son Jeff as inept offensive coordinator took a toll on both Bowden and his reputation. Certainly it should never have come to this. And of course, it didn’t need to come to this.

Retirement is often a difficult choice. For the professional athlete it is particularly difficult, as it signals the end of what is likely to be the most significant part of their lives. Willie Mays stayed on too long, Joe Namath and Johnny Unitas went out as near empty shells, and there are any number of athletes who make one too many comebacks. It is the rare case, such as that of Sandy Koufax, when the athlete leaves on top.

There was a young man who worked in the history department here years ago as an adjunct faculty member. He had an master’s in history and was also a professional boxer. He was a marginal fighter, but he was able to keep fighting as long as he wanted, because at that point in boxing history promoters were looking for white guys to put in the ring.

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When I was a young boy, I remember using the term “Chinese water torture” for any activity that seemed long, torturous and pointless. I have been reminded of this repeatedly over the last few years as slowly, almost one-by-one, the names of baseball players who tested positive for some sort of performance enhancing drugs have become public.

Anonymous and confidential drug testing, conducted for Major League baseball and the MLB Players Association in 2003 to determine the extent of the drug problem, has turned out to be not so confidential.

Obviously, some of the anonymity has been taken out of the process by various leaks from a sealed document of a grand jury. Some law abiding journalists have managed somehow to get this information and have it confirmed and published before anyone else beats them to it. Confidentiality be damned. Trust has become an unknown commodity in our tell-all world.

This week, the names of Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz leaked out a mere six years after the tests. In Manny’s case, there can be little surprise given the fact that he has just finished serving a 50-game suspension for failing a more recent test. In David Ortiz’s case, again the shock can’t be too big when one considers the circumstantial evidence drawn from changes in his career trajectory in the early part of this decade.

Despite all this, six-year-old news is being treated with the kind of sensation that a recent drug bust at your parish church might garner. Baseball writers have a special gift for defaming the game with old and tired news. They seem to have appointed themselves the special guardians of the purity of baseball across time, although given their limited vision, they are able to deal with only one set of drugs at a time.

They also can deal with only one sport at a time, or perhaps football has been too riddled with steroids from the start for anyone to care. And they insist on referring to the past 10-15 years as the Steroid Era. Perhaps it was.

However, if the “Steroid Era” becomes a specific designation for record keeping purposes, then shouldn’t there also be an “Amphetamine Era,” when players used greenies to make it through those difficult road trips, those day games after night games, and those first games after coming off coast-to-coast travel without a day off?

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If you watched The Open from Turnberry this past weekend there were two surprises: Tiger Woods didn’t make the cut, and Tom Watson nearly won the tournament. It became obvious that Tiger wasn’t playing his A-game when, in the middle of his second round, he played himself out the tournament.

Woods was one under par after seven holes and then went bogey, bogey, double bogey, par, bogey, double bogey. He was hitting shots that any weekend duffer could relate to as he topped the ball, mishit the ball several times, and explored all of the varieties of the rough. It was quite amazing.

It was not nearly half as amazing as what Tom Watson was doing. But before we get to that, we turn to the less edifying side of sport, where we are about to be treated to the opening of yet another architectural obscenity in the form of an overpriced overdone monument to misplaced societal priorities, avarice and decadence.

How appropriate is it that this latest entry in the decadence sweepstakes is to be found in Texas, and better still, in Dallas, the home of J. R. Ewing? You may recall J.R. as the leading practitioner of Texas overspending and overconsumption who taught us how the life of Texas cowboys had changed since oil money became a reality.

In the late 20th century, J.R. came to life in the form of one Jerry Jones, a bona fide oil and gas man, who purchased the Dallas Cowboys so that he could exercise his ego on national television. In recent years he has been doing his best to subvert the revenue sharing policies of the NFL and to undo the football success of the Dallas Cowboys. He has succeeded on both fronts.

Now Jerry is writing a new chapter in the history of the NFL, the history of Texas, and indeed  the history of Jerry Jones. Come September, the Dallas Cowboys will have another new home not in Dallas. Cowboys Stadium is the new billion dollar bauble ($1.15 billion) of Mr. Jones’ possessions.

Jerry says he could have built it for less, but at $850 million the stadium would lack the “wow factor” — and what’s a few hundred million dollars when the “wow factor” is out there for the getting?

No doubt Jerry was referring to the Italian marble floors, the pricey art collection, the dual gigantic video screens (72′ x 160′) that will carry the internal telecast, or the retractable glass end zone doors that will slide gently away.

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At post-game press conferences at the NCAA tournament, I heard the ringmaster ask members of the press an interesting question: “Are there any questions for the student athletes?”

Charming and quaint questions tossed off in a matter-of-fact manner always get my attention. I immediately studied my television screen in search of the species in question. Indeed there were athletes sitting there. Young basketball players who needed a shower more than they needed to be asked such penetrating questions as: “How did it feel when you made the three-point shot at the buzzer?”

In my NCAA Final Four Fantasy World, I want a reporter to ask the student athlete such questions as:

• What does the term “student athlete” mean to you?
• How often do you think of yourself as a student, rather than an athlete?
• How many classes have you missed in the past month while participating in March Madness?
• As a student athlete, what classes are you taking this term?
• How did you feel after you finished the last test in (pick a class from the previous question)?
• How long have you been at the university, and when do you expect to graduate?
• Could you tell us what your favorite class has been since you came to the university?
• Does your head coach have any interest in your academic program other than your eligibility?
• How often have you been advised to take a less difficult class?

Of course, no one ever will pose these questions. If reporters did, they would be hooted down by other reporters, called an “idiot” by Jim Calhoun, and would be barred by the NCAA from any further participation in student athlete press conferences. And of course they would be fired by their employer.

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In case you haven’t heard, and apparently many in the United States have not, Japan is the World Champion of Baseball for the second time running.

No, Japan did not win the World Series; it won the World Baseball Classic, and for the second time in as many tries the United States did not make it to the finals. If this were basketball, the outcry would be deafening. In fact, there is no outcry.

What once was the National Pastime of the United States seems to be approaching the status of the National Afterthought. Since the 1960s, when football, led by professional football, became Americans’ favorite sport, baseball has slipped in public favor and interest.

It is disturbing enough that the United States cannot win the World Baseball Classic, but that there is so little response to the loss goes well beyond disturbing.

When the United States slipped out of the championship elite in international basketball, there was a move to do something about it. The first reaction, of course, was to blame the referees, followed by blaming the fact that “the best players” were not participating.

The Dream Team was the first reaction, and their demolition of the competition at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics offered some psychic relief. It did not, however, end the bleeding and the international losses. So it was that in preparation for the last Olympics, a team was put together well in advance of the games, a team rather than a collection of all-stars. The players, coaches, and owners dedicated themselves to the concept of team basketball.

It is now time for the baseball establishment, including owners, coaches and players, to get together and dedicate themselves to putting a championship team on the field in international competition. Throughout the past few weeks it was said over and over again that the best players were not participating on the U.S. team. Who are these mythical “best players”? Wasn’t there a bevy of all-stars and dedicated millionaires out there wearing the uniform of Team USA?

It is true there were players missing who might have helped the cause, particularly pitchers. However, some 50 invited players did not choose to play. Some were injured, some claimed injury, and some were not allowed to play by their team owners. Unless and until the owners are fully committed to the WBC, Team USA, and indeed other teams, will not have their full complement of excellence. In fairness it should be said the players who were there gave it all they had.

Team owners are among the first to wave the flag, put flags on uniforms and batting helmets, play “God Bless America” in the stadiums, insist that all players stand at attention for the national anthem while flags the size of Texas cover the field, sponsor “I Am an American Day,” pass out flags, support the troops, and enthusiastically endorse any patriotic action that might make them money — or at least cost little or nothing.

But don’t ask these owners to allow their star players to participate in the World Baseball Championship.

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Over the past several months, Florida State University has been preparing to face the music in its latest athletic scandal. Now that the NCAA has made its ruling, FSU officials don’t seem to appreciate the tune. However, there is little doubt that many FSU athletes, with the proper academic counseling, could name that tune, although it might take more than three notes.

In late March of 2007, the story of academic fraud involving athletes and the Department of Athletic Academic Support Services (AASS) began to surface. The initial alarm came when a student athlete came forward and admitted that at the direction of a learning specialist in AASS, he took an online quiz for another athlete, and the learning specialist provided the answers to the quiz.

From here, the information moved up the chain of command on the academic side of the university, over to the athletic side of the university, up to the athletic director, and finally to the president’s office. As FSU’s internal investigation proceeded, it became apparent that this was not an isolated case. Many athletes had been provided answers to quizzes. Some had papers written for them in the online course, “Music of World Cultures.”

By mid-summer, 23 athletes with eligibility remaining were caught up in the fraud, and it was determined that each of them should lose 30 percent of their remaining athletic eligibility. At the end of 2007, the athletic director’s contract was not renewed, and three of his assistants had resigned. Several tutors and employees of AASS were also gone.

In February of 2008, FSU sent its investigative report to the NCAA, noting that FSU had taken putative actions on the case, placed the athletic department on two years probation, and reduced some scholarships in several sports. At this point, the NCAA took up the investigation.

Two weeks ago, the NCAA announced its findings: An academic advisor, a learning specialist, and a tutor had, over the course of three years, advised 61 athletes — 25 of them football players — to cheat in an online course. FSU will lose six scholarships in football over a three-year period, and the athletic program has been put on four years probation.

The university must now determine how many of the offending athletes in several sports participated in competition. When that is determined, any victories won will be vacated.

When you look at these penalties, they are remarkably mild. There is no loss of TV revenue, no loss of post-season competition. The loss of scholarships is minimal. This is a case that the NCAA termed “egregious,” “extremely serious,” and “intentional.” The violations were characterized as “widespread academic fraud perpetuated purposefully” by three AASS staff members.

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Some might say that Barack Obama has better things to do than fill out his bracket for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament — let alone invite Andy Katz of ESPN to interview him about his entire picking process:

And some people, like Jeff Zeleny of The Caucus (New York Times’ political blog), might even reduce it all to a crass attempt “to increase his appeal to male voters.”  Zeleny was covering Obama as he “campaigned” at a sports bar in Charleston, West Virginia.  (By the way, isn’t it a little early to say the President is “campaigning” as opposed to, say, trying to bolster support for his budget?).

But not me — or any true basketball fan who grew up in the past thirty years.  We know that Obama is sharing his bracket with the world because …. that’s the whole point of filling out a bracket. 

Why are so many people lost in the day-to-day drama of their office pools?  It’s because they want to engage in debates and discussions — and maybe even show off their sports knowledge or instincts.  If a bracket is filled out on the middle of a forest, is it even a bracket?

So you go, Barack.  We’re with you on this one – even if you showed a conservative streak in your picking that I never want to see on the policy side of things.  Come on, we got to talk about this, your bracket has only three or four upsets.

In any case, Barack, I’ve added your bracket to our office pool — just to see how we all stack up against you — to see if you really got game.

At the 2009 NCAA Convention in January, NCAA President Myles Brand gave his State of the Association Address. The subject was the dangers of commercialism in intercollegiate athletics.

Reading Brand’s address on the brink of the annual epidemic of March Madness is, to the say the least, a mind-blowing exercise. The address is either the product of unfettered chutzpah or incredible naivete. The tone and content offer considerable evidence of each.

Following the money-grabbing two weeks of conference tournaments that have no reason to exist except to fill the coffers of conferences, 64 (or, if you want to count the appendage, 65) college basketball teams will entertain the nation in its hour of need over the next three weekends. March Madness, an NCAA copyrighted phrase, will also fill the coffers of CBS television, advertisers, advertising agencies, the conferences, perhaps the universities and, of course, the NCAA.

CBS is paying the NCAA $6.1 billion over 11 years for the rights to telecast March Madness. The economist Andrew Zimbalist notes that advertisers will pay CBS an estimated $100,000 for a 30-second spot in the first round of the tournament, and the rate will increase to $1 million for a 30-second spot in the finals. The NCAA will take in nearly $600 million between the TV rights and ticket sales, assuming last year’s numbers are a reliable guide. This accounts for 96 percent of the NCAA’s annual revenue.

It is generally assumed that the big-time successful basketball programs generate great wealth for the universities. Well, not quite.

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Just when it seems that the drug issue in sports is about to slip from the headlines, and just when it seems that the revelations about steroid use in baseball are coming to an end, something happens.

This time an Olympic Gold Medal collector is photographed filling those massive swimming-developed lungs from a bong. Then the player who was going to remove Barry Bonds from the top of the home run charts — and make any asterisks irrelevant — is hung out to dry by another leak from a sealed grand jury report.

First to the more serious case. Alex Rodriguez has admitted to the use of performance-enhancing drugs after Sports Illustrated reported that Rodriquez was one of the 104 baseball players who tested positive during the confidential drug testing done in baseball in 2003.

Rodriquez told ESPN’s Peter Gammons that yes, he did use performance-enhancing substances for approximately three years beginning in 2001 when he was with the Texas Rangers. For the past week everyone and their dog has had something to say in interviews or on blogs about this “shocking” admission.

What interests me is not the admission, but the process that led to this fiasco. It begins with the fact that for decades baseball players and other athletes have been using an assortment of performance-enhancers. Over the years, only the substance type has changed. It is also likely that non-detectable substances are still being used across the sporting spectrum.

No one should be surprised by Alex Rodriquez’s admission, by the 104 who tested positive in baseball, or the countless others who have tested positive in all sports. And don’t forget all those who have been users but who have not tested positive. This is a simple reality.

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After the latest entry in Richard Crepeau’s annually devastating catalog of the gluttonous consumer buffet that is the Super Bowl, I am still amazed that Bruuuuce Springsteen has finally agreed to play the halftime show.

But he’s not.  Speaking in an extended interview with Jon Pareles of the New York Times, he argues that it is an inevitable extension of the creative process and part of his “big tent” strategy for letting his songbook have a life of its own:

It’s not just my creation at this point, and it hasn’t been really for a long time …. I wanted it to be our creation. Once you set that in motion, it’s a large community of people gathered around a core set of values. Within that there’s a wide range of beliefs, but still you do gather in one tent at a particular moment to have some common experience, and that’s why I go there too.

Before you start thinking this is one big rationalization for selling out, realize that he has never sold his songbook for commercial purposes, and he is someone who still berates himself for little things like an association with Wal-Mart during the marketing of a recent “Greatest Hits” collection:

We were in the middle of doing a lot of things, it kind of came down and, really, we didn’t vet it the way we usually do. We just dropped the ball on it.  Given its labor history, it was something that if we’d thought about it a little longer, we’d have done something different. It was a mistake. Our batting average is usually very good, but we missed that one. Fans will call you on that stuff, as it should be.

In the context of this sense of integrity, it’s beautiful to hear Bruce talk about how the inauguration of Barack Obama has transformed that iconic songbook:

A lot of the core of our songs is the American idea: What is it? What does it mean? ‘Promised Land,’ ‘Badlands,’ I’ve seen people singing those songs back to me all over the world. I’d seen that country on a grass-roots level through the ’80s, since I was a teenager. And I met people who were always working toward the country being that kind of place. But on a national level it always seemed very far away.

And so on election night it showed its face, for maybe, probably, one of the first times in my adult life. I sat there on the couch, and my jaw dropped, and I went, ‘Oh my God, it exists.’ Not just dreaming it. It exists, it’s there, and if this much of it is there, the rest of it’s there. Let’s go get that. Let’s go get it. Just that is enough to keep you going for the rest of your life. All the songs you wrote are a little truer today than they were a month or two ago.

Only Bruce, it seems, can ride the capitalist beast, shake the dirt off and come out feeling cleaner and purer — and “truer” — than ever before.

It is time once again to enter the days of the Roman numerals when excess becomes the norm, hyperbole is accepted as standard English, and the rich demonstrate in no uncertain terms that they are, and you are not. It is also when the middle class, those 85 percent of Americans who identify themselves as such, do their best to wallow in excess.

There is speculation that this Super Bowl may not measure up to the standards of decadence and waste cultivated over the years by the National Football League and those who worship at its shrines. With the economy reeling, Americans are spending less, because they have less, and some think this will slow the madness in Tampa for Super Bowl XLIII.

It is difficult to anticipate how the current economy might mute the holiday celebrations, but a cursory survey of the landscape in the run up to Super Bowl XLIII offers only minor signs of a slowdown. Two of the more notable parties have been cancelled, the most prominent being The Playboy Party. With the Playboy Empire already under some duress, the economic downturn no doubt put severe stress on their bottom line (no pun intended). The other cancellation of note, although certainly not in the same league as the Bunny Hutch, is the Sports Illustrated party. But then we know that print media is another sector where economic problems are not new.

It seems that the number of private and corporate jets coming to the Tampa Bay area for the festivities is down. Last year Jets.com booked 55 jet packages for Phoenix; as of Thursday, there were only 18 bookings. More than 500 corporate jets landed at Super Bowl XLII. That number is not expected to be reached this year, although it is not clear if this is a function of corporate belt-tightening or image maintenance prompted by recent criticism of corporate executive excesses and the GM executive fly-in to D.C.

With or without corporate jets, it still holds, as Norman Vincent Peale once said, “If Jesus were alive today, he would be at the Super Bowl.”

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To say that sport is a central institution in American life would be a gross understatement — its obsessive hold is obvious to anyone who spends more than five minutes examining our culture. As we approach the mid-winter festival of the Super Bowl, the obsession seems self-evident.

Beyond Super Sunday is the deeply imbedded notion that sport leads to the Holy Grail. If you are successful, then fame, wealth, popularity and self-fulfillment will be yours. This is the dream of the young, but it seems even more so that it is the dream of parents. The child as surrogate for the parent has reached pathological levels.

Similar in quality and effect are the dreams of other adults who ride the carousel of Sportsworld, pursuing their dreams on the backs of children and young adults. Coaches, university and secondary school administrators, television executives, product pitchmen, and a vast army of parasites and barnacles have attached themselves to the rich underbelly of Sportsworld seeking riches of their own.

This has infected families as well as teams and made willing victims out of young children who learn to lust for the rewards dangled before them. There are also the unwilling victims exploited by parents, coaches and the fantasies of modern sport.

Every now and then, incidents of striking and disgusting character are exposed and illustrate, in the most startling and crude fashion, the worst consequences of these obsessions. Two such cases involving parents have made headlines recently.

In November, police were called to a Gilbertville, Iowa, home where a 14-year-old boy had assaulted his mother. Police found 105 pills and syringes in the boy’s room, allegedly courtesy of the boy’s father, Todd Anthony Gerleman, who pumped his son with anabolic steroids to make him more competitive in the highly competitive world of Iowa wresting.

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As the nation prepares for the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States (Henry Aaron’s number, though I have not seen that referenced), I am struck by how much has been written about the changes in American society that have prepared the United States for this moment.

The New York Times today has a piece on how the fictional presidencies of Morgan Freeman and Dennis Haysbert, among others, and 50 years of various film representations, have helped Americans to imagine Obama’s breakthrough. There have been articles about how the music industry has transformed how Americans think about African Americans, and numerous comments on the significance of the civil rights movement in preparing for this moment. And there has been more than a little discussion of the role sports has played.

All of these have an element of truth to them, all have been catalytic, but none of them are singular in their power.

Over the past week I have been drawn to the events surrounding the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — past and present — and contemplating the meaning of change in that small corner of American life.

A few of you may remember that on several occasions I wrote disparagingly about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, their ownership, their fans, and the city. I explained their woeful incompetence by The Curse of Doug Williams which was visited upon them after Buc owner Hugh Culverhouse let Williams go to the USFL, refusing to pay Williams anything approaching what he was worth.

The Curse was also payback to all those Buc fans that showered Williams with racial insults every time he set foot on the field in Tampa Stadium, even though he led the Bucs to the playoffs and the NFC championship game, places the franchise had never been. It was a chorus worthy of the Klan and the lynch mobs of the old South. Williams left after the 1982 season.

By this time, Tony Dungy was beginning his career as a defensive coach in Pittsburgh where he established his reputation as one of the best defensive coaches in football. It took 15 years before Dungy was able to break the racial barrier into a head coaching position in 1996, and when he did it was in Tampa. By then Malcolm Glazer had replaced Hugh Culverhouse as owner, and Doug Williams had gone on to be the MVP of Super Bowl XXII with a record-setting performance leading the Washington Redskins over the Denver Broncos. He was the first African American quarterback to win a Super Bowl.

Dungy quickly established the Bucs as a contender and perennial playoff team. In three years, they played in the NFC championship game. Dungy coached the Bucs to more victories than any coach in their history, a feat he would duplicate in Indianapolis. However, after the 2001 season and a loss in the playoffs, he was fired.

The feeling was he couldn’t get his team over the hump offensively and win a championship. His replacement was Jon Gruden, who the Bucs hired away from the Raiders and for whom they gave up two first-round draft picks, two second-round picks, and $8 million. Gruden led the Bucs to the Super Bowl and an NFL championship the following year, becoming the youngest coach to win a Super Bowl.  As many would point out, Gruden did so with the team crafted by Tony Dungy.

As for Dungy, he was hired almost immediately by the Indianapolis Colts, who he took to the playoffs every year. Dungy was the first black coach to win a Super Bowl when, in 2007, the Colts beat the Bears, who also had a black coach — a former assistant of Dungy’s, Lovie Smith. Dungy was the winningest coach in the history of the Colts. Combined with his record in Tampa, he led his teams to 10 straight playoff appearances, and 11 playoffs in 13 years. Many of Dungy’s former assistant coaches are head coaches across the league.

Whether Dungy faced the racial taunting that Doug Williams endured I do not know, although with his success in Tampa it is hard to imagine he did. What is known is that in the past week, after Jon Gruden was fired as Bucs head coach and his successor, Raheem Morris, was named, the comments were about Morris’ age, 32. Morris is African American and there was little comment about that in reactions to his hiring.

All of this certainly points to the fact that in Tampa — once a hotbed of the Ku Klux Klan and a place that made life for an African American quarterback quite miserable — there has been some change. The NFL franchise that cast off the first African American quarterback to win a Super Bowl, and the first African American head coach to win a Super Bowl, has now hired their second African American head coach with little comment about the color of his skin.

That all of this has transpired within a week of the inauguration of Barack Obama as the first African American president of the United States is more than a simple convergence of time and place. It is also less than cause and effect. Perhaps it is one more of those small signs that there are some changes we can believe in.