Tampa Bay sports arrived in earnest in the ’90s
The locale’s most anticipated NFL moment — on top of an unprecedented autumn — evokes the time when it branched beyond football.
Chris Torello was entitled to as much jubilation as any ’90s kid over the happenings around Tampa Bay sports in his formative decade.
And he wasn’t even living in the area yet.
Now a Spectrum News sportscaster covering Central Florida, Torello grew up in Connecticut, bleeding various shades of blue for the NFL’s Giants, MLB’s Yankees, NHL’s Whalers, and NCAA’s UConn Huskies.
As the Buccaneers prepare to become the first full-blooded home team in Super Bowl history at Raymond James Stadium this Sunday, Tampa Bay already has proud distinctions in those four governing bodies. Some of them are tied to the four aforementioned teams.
Most of those achievements were aspirations, at best, when Torello was still too young to remember much. An exception was old Tampa Stadium hosting the Big Game in 1991, when the Giants edged Buffalo, 20-19, the Lombardi Trophy Final’s only one-point margin.
“Everything always seems to come back to the Northeast when it comes to Tampa Bay sports,” Torello mused in a recent email correspondence. For evidence in the present, he pointed to ex-New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady seeking a seventh ring this weekend to cap his first year as a Buc.
Torello’s narrative is partly a classic millennial rollercoaster of ’90s bliss, then adolescent angst to start the new century. Neither his team nor Tampa were involved in another Big Game until both were in January of 2001.
“I remember the Giants getting their butts kicked in Super Bowl XXXV to the Ravens more than the all-time great finish against the Bills,” he admitted.
On the other hand, and on Y2K’s opposite border, Torello and the Nutmeggers sipped Tropicana Field’s sweetest serving of out-of-town glory. The Rays’ (nee Devil Rays) lifelong home, perpetually derided for its drawbacks around baseball, seemed to work for any other sport. Basketball had its moment there when the NCAA brought one of its men’s tournament regionals in 1998, then the next year’s Final Four.
The locale’s first non-Super Bowl athletic convention of a Super Bowl-like profile was the Huskies’ first semifinal. Then it became UConn’s first national final, with Mike Krzyzewki’s capstone class from Duke as the obstacle.
Engaging a third sellout crowd in as many days at 41,430, the March 29, 1999, title tilt yielded multi-party milestones. When Torello goes on a Rays assignment, he is inclined to recall what happened when the Huskies safeguarded a 75-74 lead that night.
“Growing up with these franchises has been fascinating. I’ve really seen these teams change and grow into and out of relevance, and eventually reach a level that seems sustainable for decades to come.” – Eugene Helfrick on the Lightning and Rays
“The UConn win was special because it’s probably one of the great moments in that building’s history,” he said. “To look out on the field and know Khalid El-Amin made two clutch free throws with 5.2 seconds left and the famous (CBS play-by-play announcer) Jim Nantz line, ‘Just when people say you can’t, you can. And UConn has won the national championship in its first attempt in a final.’”
Connecticut got the goodie bag at a party punctuating Tampa Bay’s arrival — a decade in the making — as a multi-sport market. Here was March Madness’ last act of the ’90s, in a stadium waiting on its sophomore season in Major League Baseball after a few years of hosting historic crowds in two other sports.
While relative newcomers like Torello may accentuate the external flavor, Tampa and St. Petersburg have asserted themselves as their own place for athletic ardor. As with Jim Calhoun’s first cast of national champions, defying detractors and connecting on initial tries ran deep among local professional teams arising in the ’90s.
The Trop’s permanent core tenant was a long-awaited concrete Oh yeah? against the notion that Florida was strictly for spring training, not a full-time MLB team. With a uniquely enhanced capacity, the dome let two preceding tenants run up the score at the turnstiles.
“Growing up with these franchises has been fascinating,” said Eugene Helfrick, a lifelong local as old as the Tampa Bay Lightning who now covers the team for The Hockey Writers. “I’ve really seen these teams change and grow into and out of relevance, and eventually reach a level that seems sustainable for decades to come.”
That sense of security, together with Sunday’s home team, reaffirms great change that started on the cusp of the century. Whether they are Tampa Bay natives or interested transfers, millennial sports enthusiasts have ample cause for nostalgia this Super Bowl. This is Tampa’s fifth turn hosting the Big Game, and the first of those five fielding predominantly ’90s-kid rosters.
Because of the sport and the team at hand, there is a bit of a back-to-the-future aura in play. The Bucs are the center of attention, and there was a time when they and only they could put their dateline in outsiders’ heads.
During Brady’s anonymous middle-school, high-school, and college days, adamant ambition ensured football would soon have company on the “other” TB’s sports-talk carousel. Win or lose Sunday, the long-term payoff has never been more apparent. But the way it all burgeoned in the ’90s is worth a few thousand words itself.
Tempest in a Dome
If this century is to pack any sort of a Roaring Twenties, Tampa Bay is an early contender to typify that in sports. Between a pandemic-delayed Stanley Cup Final and an on-schedule World Series, October of 2020 had the Lightning nabbing a title and the Rays falling two games short.
That harvest was a joint enterprise between the brands that made this market one of many to gain multiple major-league Big Four franchises during another prosperous decade. As those men’s professional leagues combined for unprecedented expansion sprees plus eight relocations, seven locales joined two leagues apiece.
What sets Tampa Bay’s pair apart is that they are the only two of those ’90s start-ups to have played in the same building.
St. Petersburg introduced the Florida Suncoast Dome with intent to make big-league baseball come and stay beyond March. It was, on the surface, the most logical almanac filler for an area living practically on pigskin alone.
The Buccaneers launched in 1976, and their top company consisted of various collegiate athletic programs. The North American Soccer League did field the Tampa Bay Rowdies, but both entities evaporated in the mid-’80s.
In terms of high-profile, neutral-site college contests, Tampa got the Hall of Fame Bowl (now the Outback Bowl) in 1986. During football’s regular season, the Helfrick household was one of many to make the University of Southern Florida Bulls appointment viewing on Saturdays.
Aspiring baseball brass saw America’s other tried-and-true outdoor pastime as the next hit, albeit within a permanently enclosed stadium. For a while, though, local rooters spent their summers indulging in an equivalent of Sunday calzones after six nights of pizza.
After taking in a series of one-off events, including tennis’ 1990 Davis Cup, the Suncoast Dome summoned the Arena Football League as its first athletic tenant. Ahead of the 1991 season, the Pittsburgh Gladiators sought a greener gridiron, and found it in St. Petersburg.
Upon remodeling to pose as an arena, the would-be ballpark accommodated larger crowds than its peers. Filled seats signaled unmistakable, and perhaps predictable, interest in the new Tampa Bay Storm, who rewarded the fanfare. They won the ArenaBowl in their inaugural season, attained four in their first six, and later hosted two in a newer building.
With the AFL’s championship game at the higher seed’s place, the Dome was the site of the Storm’s crowning victory over intrastate rival Orlando on September 1, 1995.
That day’s crowd of 25,087 was easily the largest in the league’s 33-season lifespan. In a twist of fate, with physical distancing capping this Sunday’s crowd at 25,000 ticketholders, the Storm’s home title game will be better attended than the Bucs’.
As big a deal as its model franchise became, calling the AFL a major league is a stretch. It may have been the highest level of football in its 50-yard-field, eight-players-to-a-side form. But it never got on an unequivocal par with the Big Four, and shuttered in 2019.
That said, if it had more fan bases like the ’90s Storm, perhaps arena football would have lived longer. As far as Tampa Bay was concerned at the time, its presence was no small bonus.
“Not many major cities have more than one sport available at any time,” said Helfrick. “So to have three plus smaller leagues like the AFL is truly amazing.”
That company’s order of arrival was equally extraordinary.
Take me out to the…puck game?
The Suncoast Dome was conceived in the mid-’80s with a full-time roof meant to make it multi-purpose. As with Houston’s revolutionary Astrodome, the intended anchor event was self-explanatory, but the covering proved itself a pivotal preservative. When the place opened, the Storm and more kept it running while hardball kept swinging and missing at the majors.
Over the decades, Tampa Bay’s powers that be tried to tug six existing franchises. As late as 1989, they almost made Chicago a one-team city by pinching the White Sox. Then when the 12-team National League was primed to match the American’s membership of 14, the ready-for-business Dome was their best bait yet.
At the new decade and facility’s outset, the New York Times quoted then-St. Petersburg mayor Robert Ulrich on an aim to inaugurate a team between 1992 and 1994.
But instate rival Miami won on the eastern front. A five-year bidding marathon culminated in 1990 with the Florida Marlins and Colorado Rockies cleared to take off in 1993.
In between, St. Pete tried to nick the San Francisco Giants, only to have the NL owners override the move. Meanwhile investor Frank Morsani spearheaded a lawsuit that dragged for a decade.
With the Tampa Bay Baseball Group, Morsani — who had orchestrated two other failed relocation campaigns — claimed that MLB put his market at the top of the expansion waiting list as a consolation prize. When the time came to deliver on the goods, the suit said, delayed gratification was still delayed.
Despite that inauspicious start to the ’90s and the Dome, someone offered Tampa Bay ticketholders a non-Bucs big-league experience while Morsani and company were in court. The suit began in November of 1992, one month after the Lightning debuted at Tampa’s medium-sized Expo Hall.
The year Miami and Denver connected with MLB, two Tampa Bay groups bid for an NHL expansion team. One intended to base the franchise in St. Petersburg. The other — led by Hall of Famer Phil Esposito, a former Boston Bruin and New York Ranger — had Tampa in mind.
Four days after the Davis Cup culminated at the Dome, the latter won, opposite Ottawa, and the 10,425-seat Expo Hall stood in for the Lightning’s rookie season. While waiting on a new arena — which broke ground in the spring of 1994 — the team subsequently shuffled to St. Pete, where they renamed and redressed the aspiring ballpark as the ThunderDome.
“Tampa always seems to deliver when it comes to big sports moments.” – Chris Torello
In the long run, the Dome wouldn’t do for hockey any more than vice versa. But just by being there, the Lightning launched a momentous time for their market and their sport.
Unlike in baseball, Tampa Bay beat Miami in a footrace to the NHL. In so doing, it was the first piece in the league’s earnest continental ambitions.
Until 1992, hockey had only graced the Sun Belt through the successful Los Angeles Kings and the forgettable Atlanta Flames. But by then those Kings had Wayne Gretzky sparking more interest, effectively convincing the cold game to try warmer climates. Gretzky’s team had even scrimmaged Pittsburgh at the Dome as part of Tampa Bay’s market test, drawing an unprecedented audience of 25,581.
You might say Southern states experienced an NHL revolution in the ’90s, a la the American music scene’s British Invasion of the ’60s. If that is an apt comparison, then the Bolts were the Beatles. Beginning with them, and culminating with a new Atlanta franchise, the decade inaugurated eight new teams in as many years along or below the 36th parallel.
Whether their status as the first building block meant special pressure or not, the Lightning struck some non-allergenic achievements. Their first game at the ThunderDome to commence the 1993-94 season attracted 27,227 fans. When they made their first playoff appearance in 1996, the Dome’s turnstiles tallied 25,945 and 28,183.
In any conventional NHL arena — with 21,302, Montreal’s Bell Centre has the only capacity north of 20,000— such crowds would have the fire marshal fuming. But while they could get away with it, the Lightning set longstanding indoor and postseason records to cap their St. Petersburg residency. For three years, they were part of a top three with Original Six and Canada-based franchises on the NHL’s attendance leaderboard.
By the fall of 1996, Tampa’s Ice Palace — which at 19,092 remains the league’s seventh-largest building as Amalie Arena — was ready. Upon moving there, the Bolts slipped to sixth place with 17,442 fans per night in 1996-97. Then a lack of on-ice success caught up after a five-year honeymoon, and financial follies grew dire for a time. Nothing special awaited until the mid-aughts.
But while 1998-99 was an all-time low at the gate, with a mere 11,510 nightly fans enduring a 19-win season, the All-Star Game was a hot ticket. As the first Southern venue since L.A.’s Forum to host the midwinter scrimmage, the Ice Palace stuffed in a standing-room-only audience of 19,758. They watched Gretzky — by then a Ranger and 11 weeks away from retirement — skate to the game’s MVP prize.
Deferred and delayed gratification
In the spring of 1997, the Lightning happened to be the guests at the Hartford Whalers’ final game. Torello and the rest of Connecticut bid a bittersweet farewell to their only major-league team, as it added to the NHL’s Sun-Belt snowball by resurfacing as the Carolina Hurricanes. Those Canes were run by Peter Karmanos and Jim Rutherford, who once upon a time competed with the Espositos as the NHL’s Tampa Bay suitors.
But meanwhile, Torello and his fellow pinstripe partisans were relishing a gift with a Central Floridian base.
With Legends Field in Tampa proper, the Yankees brought their spring training back to the Bay in 1996. They previously had three stretches in St. Petersburg — variously coinciding with the Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle eras — plus various non-Florida bases before spending 35 years in the outer Miami suburb of Fort Lauderdale.
Legends Field, now George M. Steinbrenner Field, was a two-years-in-the-making symbol of turning the area into a Bronx South. By Grapefruit League standards, it is New York-sized, originally boasting a 10,200-seat capacity that has since swelled to 11,000. The Red Sox’s JetBlue Park at Fenway South in Fort Meyers is the only other park of its kind accommodating five-figure audiences.
In the minors, the Tampa Yankees took root as the franchise’s new Single-A affiliate in 1994, logging their inaugural season before their permanent home broke ground. Featuring Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, they promptly won the Florida State League pennant.
Year 3 of the new child club’s run and Year 1 of the parent club tuning up in Tampa culminated in triumph too. The Yankees snapped an 18-year gap between World Series championships, delivering the first pro title in Torello’s wheelhouse since the Giants bested the Bills.
Now at the quarter-century mark and counting, the arrangement looks tried and true. For the 26th time in the yard’s history, pitchers and catchers will report to Steinbrenner Field within weeks of the Super Bowl. And if it is anything like recent springs, Torello will be happily on hand to fetch the local perspective.
“Every time I go to GMS Field it’s special,” he said. “History’s team starts every season there. No franchise lives up to the hype or can deliver true competitive teams every year like the Yankees.”
If you go by the full scope of the last quarter-century, the data supports that assertion. The Yanks have launched five banner seasons in Tampa, including three to close out the ’90s. And when the rest return to the Northeast, they still leave their Florida State League representatives as the Tampa Tarpons.
The Tarpons’ longevity is all the more impressive after MLB’s recent mutilation of the minor-league system. While other proud affiliations have been dropped or overhauled, Tampa’s New York partner is one non-Big Four ’90s establishment to weather the winds of change. What can be said for the sport anchored by pitchers could not be said of the one based on a pitch.
Another futbol fling
While not a novel practice, christening teams with singular or uncountable nicknames emerged as something of a ’90s fad. Among the Big Four, it essentially started gaining traction with the Tampa Bay Lightning. Only two other Floridian franchises — the NBA’s Miami Heat and Orlando Magic — plus the New Orleans/Utah Jazz had already done this.
Following the Lightning, hockey’s Colorado Avalanche (1995) and Minnesota Wild (franchise granted in 1997, inaugurated in 2000) plus the majority of Major League Soccer (launched in 1996) and a rash of WNBA (launched in 1997) teams continued the habit.
None other than the Tampa Bay Mutiny, one of 10 founding MLS tenants, were part of that hip clique. The past tense is key, for the Mutiny’s timeframe and whatever fulfillment it contained makes them a doubtless ’90s fad.
The Mutiny are now going on two decades as a hologram, being the only one of those original MLS franchises to fold. That said, the club mustered six seasons, with the inaugural being its best in the win column.
Spearheaded by scoring leader Roy Lassiter, the Mutiny topped the collective 1996 MLS standings at 20-12 and won a playoff round for the only time. They cast off the Columbus Crew before bowing to the eventual MLS Cup champion DC United in the Eastern Conference final.
Attendance-wise, upon following the Bucs to Raymond James Stadium, the Mutiny had their best season with an average of 13,116 fans in 1999, good for ninth on the league leaderboard. But Y2K and the advent of the new millennium witnessed a pair of fatal business bumps, and the team dissolved before the 2002 season.
A new version of the Rowdies has since arisen at lower levels, and failed to upgrade upon trying in 2017. Still, the site of MLS’s unceremonious Tampa Bay finale represented another critical additive to the market’s mutation.
Tampa Stadium gave way to Raymond James Stadium in 1998, giving the Bay three new athletic mansions within the decade. That same year, the area had three bona fide Big Four teams for the first time.
“In order to grow a world-class market, you really need world-class venues, which Tampa has two,” said Helfrick.
Wait, two?
“While Tropicana Field has always been a landmark that I love,” Helfrick explained, “I also understand that it is a stadium that is no longer relevant by today’s standards.”
Rays of bright sides
When the Dome assumed its third name as Tropicana Field, it invited instant critiques, many revolving around its overhanging catwalks. Baseballs bound for the seats or a glove in normal venues were clanking and crashing.
That said, the criticisms only happened because the place was finally fulfilling its founding purpose. The Devil Rays debuted after a cathartic announcement launched three years of emboldened anticipation.
Following the grand unveiling, E.A. Torriero of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported misgivings among parents and religious leaders over the nickname. Torriero also took the time and space to liken the park’s exterior to “a giant tilting flying saucer.” But most locals were just thrilled to have their team, whose midday introduction one late-winter Thursday interrupted regular network programming.
On March 9, 1995, Major League Baseball announced Phoenix and St. Petersburg as the sites of its 29th and 30th member clubs, effective in 1998. The Devil Rays thus existed for half of the ’90s and played for one-fifth of the decade, and the times of their origin showed.
While every big-league team has always ended in “s” or “x”, Tampa Bay joined its expansion classmate by maxing out the volume on loud brands and uniforms. Alongside the Arizona Diamondbacks, it brought unconventional mascots to the majors. To match (or one-up) the purple and teal of the D-Backs, the D-Rays trimmed their black with purple and various oceanic shades of green and blue.
Another visual, a familiar face for the region, added to the distraction from a predictably losing team. The first face of the Devil Rays was future Hall-of-Fame third baseman Wade Boggs, a former Red Sox and Yankees standout who spent his adolescence around Tampa even before the Buccaneers were born.
Coming from New York via free agency for the inaugural season, Boggs had five preceding spring trainings to get reacquainted with the Bay. When he stayed after his sixth, he highlighted the new team’s opener with its first home run before 45,369 supporters March 31, 1998.
The catwalk also could not bar Boggs from reaching a milestone in the twilight of his career and the decade. He delighted his home crowd on August 7, 1999, by depositing a home run beyond right field for his 3,000th career hit.
Boggs’ swan song coincided with a sophomore slide at the box office. The Rays have yet to cross a cumulative two million ticket sales in a single season since accumulating 2,506,293 in 1998. It took until their 2008 on-field breakthrough for any other season to surpass 1999’s runner-up count.
Nonetheless, unlike the Storm or the Mutiny, the team the area craved most expressly has survived in this century after thriving, fanfare-wise, in its green ’90s. Though they rank third in local sports talk, their bronze medal is a still a medal.
“Even the Rays,” said Helfrick, “which may not draw the same as the Lightning and Bucs, still have a deep and dedicated fan base that consume everything that they do.”
Lightning capital, lightning rod
Being the last debutante of the decade, the Rays had the most growing to do of any ’90s upstart in Tampa Bay sports. After the turn of the century, they started to tame their fashion toward two simple shades of blue. Since 2008 they have answered strictly to the name Rays and contended for titles off and on.
As it nears its 31st birthday next month, their abode is the most seasoned and dated on the scene. Attendance is erratic, incessant relocation rumors have dogged the franchise and its faithful, and the type of open-air park the architects originally envisioned is in order.
Assuming someone secures the ground and the funding, that vision is doubtlessly doable. Living proof lies within Tampa proper and the facilities it fostered circa 1994 to 1998. As they have come into their own, those architectural ’90s children have established themselves as hotspots for electrifying events.
Raymond James Stadium, the newest major venue, is raring to remind the world of the region’s athletic nucleus. As if the Buccaneers’ involvement did not yield enough pressure, Sunday’s game has a horde of heavyweights to outmuscle if it wants a prime position in the local history books.
“Tampa always seems to deliver when it comes to big sports moments,” Torello said.
Come what may, Super Bowl LV will be over before midnight ushers in Monday. A Buccaneer victory would leave a radiant afterglow, but sooner or later local fans will need another fix of action. Should this game not go the host’s way, Tampa Bay could use a post-haste diversion.
A defending Stanley Cup champion — which has two titles and three finals in its annals, as many as any Sun Belt franchise — will help either way. Ditto a reigning AL pennant-waver still seeking its first World Series triumph after two journeys there.
“Without the ’90s sports boom, Tampa Bay likely never evolves beyond a football town. Football will always dominate in the South, but with the addition of hockey and baseball, it turned the entire market into a sports destination.” – Eugene Helfrick
Civic pride also stems from hospitality privileges every time a marquee neutral-site convention, championship, or international affair picks the dateline.
“Amalie Arena and Raymond James have attracted so much positive attention for decades to show what Tampa Bay sports is and can be,” said Helfrick.
To that point, in 2018, Tampa got its second turn with the NHL All-Star Game, lapping 17 of its peers. That same winter, the women’s U.S. Olympic hockey team centralized in the town, gelling there for five months before grabbing gold at PyeongChang.
St. Petersburg has not held court for the NCAA since 1999. But in the 21st century, Amalie Arena has held three Women’s Final Fours and two Men’s Frozen Fours.
No other Sun Belt city has hosted college hockey’s national championship more than once. Tampa will go a third time in 2023, which will tie it with Boston and St. Paul for the most in a quarter-century until the latter hosts again the next year.
Meanwhile, when women’s basketball brings its crowning event back to Amalie in 2025, the place will regain the record for most all-time hosting gigs. And it still won’t be quite as old then as the Trop is now.
In another sign of discrepancies, Raymond James Stadium has added a second bowl game to its rotation, taking the Gasparilla Bowl (established 2008) off St. Petersburg’s hands in 2018.
Raymond James may have held the 2016-17 College Football Playoff final and its third Super Bowl in 21 years this Sunday regardless. But you need not look back any farther than the oldest millennials’ consciousness to explain the rest.
“Without the ’90s sports boom, Tampa Bay likely never evolves beyond a football town,” said Helfrick, who played the game himself. “Football will always dominate in the South, but with the addition of hockey and baseball, it turned the entire market into a sports destination.”
Follow Al Daniel on Twitter @WriterAlDaniel and browse his full feature-writing portfolio here