BUC-ING THE TREND

TAMPA, Fla. —  The Tampa Bay Buccaneers will be staying at the Sheraton-Torrey Pines in La Jolla and practicing at UC San Diego for Super Bowl XXXII.

“Who knows?” said Chuck Nichols, president of the San Diego Super Bowl Host Committee. “Stranger things have happened.”

Name one.

Mr. Nichols, we might learn there are martians living among us--maybe even playing for the Chargers if they ever open practices. Barry Switzer could earn coach-of-the-year honors, Mike Ditka might adopt Heath Shuler as his son, and who knows, Mr. Nichols, Green Bay might not win another game all year.

But even Stephen King lacks this kind of imagination: Tampa Bay’s Trent Dilfer leads all NFC passers!

Strange, strange doings here in Florida: In his first 26 games, Dilfer threw 34 interceptions and only six touchdown passes. This season the former Fresno State hurler has three more touchdown passes and two fewer interceptions than Dan Marino--and a quarterback rating 39 points higher.

The world is about to end: The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, an organization with only three winning campaigns in its 21-year history, are favored--that is favored--by 3 1/2 points Sunday night to defeat Jimmy Johnson, Marino and the Miami Dolphins.

“What a wonderful story,” said John McKay, former USC coach, who went 0-26 here before winning a game. “Yes, yes, an amazing story.”

A modern-day fairy tale: In compiling a 64-159 record over the last 14 seasons, the Buccaneers have lost at least 10 games 13 times--failing to record a winning record since the 1982 strike-shortened season of nine games. They have not drawn enough fans in their last 16 home games to lift the TV blackout, but not only is this contest against the Dolphins sold out, scalpers are expected outside Houlihan’s Stadium for the first time.

When these kinds of irregularities happen in government, they hire a special prosecutor: Tampa Bay is 8-2 in its last 10 games, 3-0 this season and no other team in the National Football Conference is undefeated, including the Green Bay Packers, who planned to go undefeated.

“We have the reputation of: ‘Oh, they’re Tampa Bay and they’ll fold up eventually,’ ” said Tony Dungy, Buccaneer coach. “But I don’t think that’s going to happen. I would be surprised if we don’t continue to improve.”

Tampa Bay was 2-22 since 1991 in NFC Central road games, but this season it is 2-0 and 3-0 in conference play, which gives the Buccaneers the tiebreaking edge for home-field advantage come the playoffs. How often has the word “playoffs” been mentioned in the same sentence with Tampa?

Mr. Nichols, sir, nothing stranger has ever happened.

Maybe everyone should have seen it coming, the fact that the Buccaneers hired a Vulcan to become their head coach. OK, so maybe Tony Dungy only looks like a Vulcan with the Spock-like ears, but he’s always so logical, methodical and collected, and until someone spotted him on the sideline smiling last week, well . . .

“I think initially because he’s so cool and calm we were wondering: Shouldn’t he be yelling at us a little more?” linebacker John Lynch said. “We learned quickly with his style, though, you can be successful. I mean it’s almost prophetic in everything he says each week. He says, if we do this, this and that, we’ll win, and you know what, we win.”

Well . . . is it any wonder then that the Buccaneers’ progress has come at warp speed?

“The danger could be in a situation likes ours where you haven’t had much success that you think 3-0 is something to celebrate,” Dungy said. “It’s really not; it’s less than one-fifth of the season. We had a three-game win streak last year, it just happened to come in the middle of the year, and we ended up 6-10. It’s nothing more right now than the chance to say we’re happy to be in first place and not be in last place.”

The last time Tampa Bay opened a season 3-0, “My Sharona” was a No. 1 song. The Buccaneers actually started 5-0 in 1979 before finishing 10-6, advancing to the playoffs and eventually losing to the Rams in the NFC Championship game--so long ago that the Rams were still playing football in Los Angeles.

“It was kind of what these guys are feeling right now,” former safety Mark Cotney, who played on that 1979 team, told the Tampa Tribune recently. “We’d been the doormat of the league so long, and all of a sudden you’re not only the toast of Tampa, you’re the toast of the NFL. It’s a great feeling.”

While Dungy tries to keep a grip on perspective, everyone else here is preparing to go bonkers. More than 70,000 fans will be waving “We Believe” signs at the Dolphins’ game. Some of those fans were waiting at the Buccaneers’ practice facility in the middle of the night a week ago to greet the team after its win in Minnesota.

The burnt orange uniforms that made the team stand out in defeat have been replaced by red, black and pewter.

“We’re going to wear our pewter pants Sunday night,” Dungy said. “I was lobbying for the red, but since we’ve become known as the Pewter Pirates we can’t disappoint anybody.”

What timing. Luxury suites and club seats in a new $165-million stadium to open next Sept. 20 have recently gone on sale and are moving rapidly. A slick videotape produced to market the new ticket packages features Al Michaels, who calls the Buccaneers one of the NFL’s “most electrifying teams.”

Actually, some truth in advertising, and stranger things have happened?

Two years ago, the Buccaneers set out to hire Johnson, before he signed with the Dolphins, and then met with Florida’s Steve Spurrier. The Buccaneers, on their way to Baltimore before Art Modell swooped in to take the money and leave Cleveland, had little to offer.

“For my sanity, it would be best to go to a place where the quarterback is a Hall of Famer, not with a guy [Dilfer] I don’t have faith in,” Johnson told Sports Illustrated at the time.

And Spurrier, land-locked in Florida, didn’t like the prospects of moving to Baltimore or Los Angeles. Yeah, Los Angeles, and if Tampa had not won its referendum to use tax money to build a new stadium, a deal was in the works with Hollywood Park to make the Buccaneers the Los Angeles Spidermen.

Rich McKay, Tampa Bay’s general manager and son of John, interviewed Dungy and reported back to owner Malcolm Glazer that Dungy was a nice man, but probably not head coaching material.

“There’s something about a head coach that jumps out at you,” McKay explained. “I interviewed a lot of guys and every one of them was impressive in the way they sold themselves. Tony was much more basic: I’ve been a good player, I’ve been a good coach and I have very simple philosophies.”

Time passed, and McKay decided to chat again with Dungy, and although Dungy reported low key, without jacket and tie or any overt attempt to sell himself again, McKay came away dazzled.

“I told our owner I missed on this,” McKay said. “It was the same Tony, but I came away shocked that he hadn’t been hired before this as head coach.”

Dungy, 41, a name that came up almost every year for head coaching consideration, seldom even drew an interview. Hired by Pittsburgh Coach Chuck Noll at 25, the youngest assistant coach in the NFL, the former college quarterback and NFL defensive back began to develop a defensive philosophy that would become revolutionary.

Graduating from Pittsburgh to Kansas City and then on to Minnesota, his defenses gained a reputation for being aggressive, turning the ball over and scoring. Now he’s on the brink of going 10-10 with a victory over Miami as head coach of the worst performing team in football in more than a decade.

“When I took the job, everybody talked about the 10-12 years of losing and all the negatives,” Dungy said. “I didn’t want to look at history. I didn’t see any reason we couldn’t win. We had a lot of young players that were pretty good.”

Against Dungy’s defenses, the opposition has failed to score 20 points in 12 of the last 14 games, and now on offense Tampa Bay is starting to get frisky with running backs Warrick Dunn and Mike Alstott and wide receivers Horace Copeland and Reidel Anthony.

Throw in Dilfer, who has not thrown an interception in his last 147 passes, including exhibitions, and now you know why some people are calling them “America’s Darlings.”

“I know the national perspective, because I deal with it with my friends back home in California, is that we are simply the worst franchise in the history of football,” Dilfer said. “So now it is a total shock to see that franchise go 3-0. But I can tell you, it’s been a slow process, going back to last year when we went 5-2 down the stretch, and you could see the great coach, the great drafts, the great new ownership and the maturity, and you knew it was coming. It’s no fluke.”

The fans here sensed as much. Although distressed by Dungy’s 0-5 start a year ago, and then his 1-8 mark, they saw his team respond with a 20-17 overtime victory over the Raiders and then a 25-17 victory in San Diego.

“It was unbelievable,” said Dungy, who received a standing ovation after entering an arena here for a Roy Jones boxing match. “We are 3-8 and these people are on their feet, and I turn around thinking Roy Jones is coming into the arena and, no, these people are giving me a standing ovation.”

The applause is just beginning. The 1972 Dolphins, of course, went undefeated, and now you have the 1997 Tampa Bay Buccaneers on their way.

“The season is too long, too competitive,” Dungy said. “I only foresee that as a once-in-a-lifetime feat. I don’t think you will ever see that again.”

So does that mean Dungy is predicting defeat for his perfect Buccaneers?

“Oh, no--that’s just such an unbelievable thing,” Dungy said. “But you never know--you never know.”

Stranger things have happened.

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Changing History?

Tampa Bay, off to a 3-0 start, has had only three winning seasons and has finished last in its division 11 times.