SHIPSHAPE

Tampa Bay? No way.

For 17-year-old Rich McKay, it was culture shock. L.A was his city, football was his life and the USC Trojans were his passion.

USC’s coach, John McKay, was his father. One of the Trojan receivers, J.K. McKay, was his older brother. The USC quarterback, Pat Haden, was a close family friend.

So when John McKay, one year removed from having won a national championship at USC, decided to give up college football and try coaching at the professional level in Tampa Bay, young Rich, still in high school, wasn’t ready for such a drastic move.

Rich was still floating on the cardinal-and-gold cloud of a year earlier. On New Year’s Day 1975, the Trojans beat Ohio State in the Rose Bowl to give his father his fourth and final national title. His brother caught a touchdown pass late in the game that preceded a decisive two-point conversion.

It was different for John McKay. He had nothing left to prove at the collegiate level. He had grown weary of the yearly recruiting battles. The challenge of building an expansion club--the Tampa Bay Buccaneers--was more appealing.

It was all so new to the rest of the McKay family that when John’s wife, Corky, was told of the move, she and Rich pulled out a map to see where they were going. They found Florida and found Miami. They looked all around Florida’s major city, but there was no Tampa.

“Oh,” Corky finally said, “it’s over here on the other coast.”

Rich, who had grown up in bustling Orange County and attended Bishop Amat High, was less than impressed when he first drove through Tampa.

“What do you do around here?” he asked a clerk in a store. “Where are all the people?”

He was told about a submarine ride in the bay.

“People like taking a tour on it,” the clerk said.

I’m out of here, thought Rich.

He decided he would stay in Southern California for his final year of high school, living with the Haden family. And then of course, he would go to USC.

Until Hugh Culverhouse intervened. He was then the Buccaneers’ owner, the man who had lured John McKay east.

“This is going to be the hardest year of your father’s life,” Culverhouse told Rich. “You need to make this move.”

So, reluctantly, Rich enrolled at Tampa’s Jesuit High, became the team’s quarterback, and, after a lifetime of rooting for the Los Angeles Rams, became a Buccaneer fan.

It was indeed the hardest year of John McKay’s life. The Buccaneers went 0-14 in 1976, their first season. They didn’t score in their first two games.

They lost another 12 in a row in 1977, going 0-26 before finally beating the New Orleans Saints, 33-14. Tampa Bay won again the next week to finish 2-12.

“It was traumatic,” Rich recalled. “Living in Tampa, you just wanted to keep your head under the blanket. If we were even close at halftime, you felt great. We stopped going out. We would get our dinner at a drive-thru.”

No more. Now everyone wants to buy Rich McKay dinner. In his fifth season as the Buccaneer general manager, he is the man who has built the team that will, ironically, face the NFL team of his boyhood, the since-transplanted St. Louis Rams, in Sunday’s NFC championship game.

Rich doesn’t think his father is to blame for the Buccaneers’ early struggles.

“It was the league,” he said. “They were dead wrong. They would take these new cities who would pay them all that money and they would give them nothing. It makes no sense.”

The new teams were given no breaks in the draft, no opportunity to get off to a fast start. The early success of recent expansion teams such as the Jacksonville Jaguars and Carolina Panthers wasn’t possible in the ‘70s.

“We [the Buccaneers] were dealt a hand of twos, threes and fours,” Rich McKay said. “No face cards.”

And no regrets from John McKay, now 76 and retired in Tampa.

“I enjoyed the pro experience,” he said. “We just didn’t spend a lot of money. Guys would come up on the waiver wire, and they would want to know how much are we going to have to pay them.

“They give you more players now, but I’ve got no complaints. I knew what I was doing. Nobody forced me to take the job.”

When John McKay coached the Trojans, he was known for his sharp wit. Asked after one poor performance by the Trojans what he thought of the team’s execution, he said, “I’m in favor of it.”

He could have used that line every week in Tampa.

But soon, the old McKay magic was back. In the 1979 season, in their fourth season, the Buccaneers astounded the football world by making it all the way to the NFC championship game, where they faced the Rams.

“He expected it,” Rich McKay said of his father. “He had a plan to get there by building from within and stressing defense first.”

That 1979 NFC championship game was a defensive struggle, the Rams winning, 9-0.

“It was the hardest-hitting game I can ever remember,” Rich said. “Like a USC-Ohio State game. Very physical.”

By that point, Rich had long since abandoned his idea of attending USC. So he attended Princeton in New Jersey and then Stetson University’s College of Law in DeLand, Fla., becoming an attorney in 1986. For six years, he was the Buccaneers’ legal counsel.

Rich never played for his father as had J.K. Rich’s football relationship with John began in earnest when he joined the Buccaneer front office, but that made it easier on him in some ways than it had been for his older brother.

John could never be accused of favoring his son on the field. On one occasion, J.K. was hit so hard by an opposing player, he lost several teeth.

When John saw J.K. in the locker room, the receiver’s face a bloody mess, the coach’s only comment was, “Well, there goes $2,000 worth of braces.”

John McKay retired from the Buccaneers in 1984 after compiling a 44-88-1 record with three playoff appearances, but Rich had already formed another bond by then, with Culverhouse, also an attorney.

The McKay name, which had opened the door for Rich, also opened him up to questions about his qualifications as a football man. Could he be successful without his father’s help?

“At first, it bothered me a bit,” Rich acknowledged.

In 1995, he got the chance to show what he could do when he became general manager under new owner Malcolm Glazer.

Rich’s first two picks in his first draft were defensive lineman Warren Sapp and linebacker Derrick Brooks, anchoring the defense that has carried this season’s team to Sunday’s title game. In 1996, McKay drafted running back Mike Alstott, a key figure in the current club’s offense.

Also in ‘96, McKay hired Coach Tony Dungy, who was defensive oriented.

Building from within with an emphasis on defense. Sound familiar?

“People have asked me if I’m following my father’s blueprint,” Rich said. “I don’t know, but that is how we have gone about it, going after defensive players first and a defensive-minded coach. And on offense, establish the run first and then pass. That was my father’s formula.”

In the five seasons with Rich McKay as general manager, the Buccaneers have a 42-38 record in regular-season games and have made the playoffs twice. In the previous five seasons, they were 25-55 with no playoff appearances.

How does John McKay feel about his son’s success?

“I sent him to law school to be a lawyer,” John said, “but now that he’s in it, I’m very happy that he’s enjoying himself so much. That’s what you want, for your kids to enjoy themselves.

“What he has done is wonderful. It means he has caught his brother. He never played, but he has proven he has the ability to get a team and build it.”

And perhaps surpass his father’s NFL pinnacle in 1979, getting over that last hump to the Super Bowl.

“I wish I had done better,” John said. “I hope he does better.”

John may be a fervent Buccaneer fan, but only from afar. Last Sunday’s divisional playoff victory for Tampa Bay over the Washington Redskins at Raymond James Stadium was the first game he attended this season.

Is being in the stadium too nerve-racking for him?

“I don’t get nervous,” John said. “I get cold. I spent enough time sitting on cold sidelines for a lot of years.”

Now that Rich McKay is firmly entrenched in Tampa at age 40, often bringing his own sons--Hunter, 11, and John, 7--to work to learn the family business, could anything ever lure him back to the West Coast?

When the possibility of starting an expansion team in L.A. was still viable, Rich’s name was prominently mentioned.

When an L.A. reporter got up to leave Rich’s office last week, the general manager walked him to the door and said, “So when are we going to get a team in L.A.?”

He may have blossomed in Tampa Bay, but Rich McKay still hasn’t cut those roots in L.A.

*

NEW OWNER

A $635-million bid by Robert Wood Johnson IV, above, to buy the New York Jets is unanimously approved by the NFL. Johnson vows to have a new coach in place this week.

NEW COACH

As expected, Mike Sherman goes from offensive coordinator at Seattle to being in charge of the Green Bay Packers.

Coverage,

Page 8

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

NFC PLAYOFFS

AFC CHAMPIONSHIP

Tennessee at Jacksonville

Sunday, 9:30 a.m., Channel 2

*

NFC CHAMPIONSHIP

Tampa Bay at St. Louis

Sunday, 1:15 p.m., Channel 11

*

SUPER BOWL XXIV

at Atlanta

Sunday, Jan. 30

3:15 p.m.

Channel 7

Florida Developer

How Tampa Bay General Manager Rich McKay built this season’s team:

Draft: 25

Free agent: 18

Inherited: 9

Waivers: 2

Trade: 1

Season by Season

Tampa Bay’s regular-season winning percentage, with its regular-season records.