Buffalo's Forgotten Champion - The Story Of The Buffalo All-Americans

Buffalo operated an early professional football circuit from at least the late 1800s onward. Among notable predecessors to the team discussed here were the Buffalo Oakdales, whose heyday was in the years 1908 and 1909 and who ceased operations c. 1915; the Cazenovias, who were New York's best team in 1910 and 1911; and the Lancaster Malleables, from the neighboring town of Lancaster, New York, who were the best team in the region in 1913 and 1914. These teams played each other and teams from nearby cities (for example, the Rochester Jeffersons).

The All-Stars played from 1915 to 1917 under the leadership of Eugene F. Dooley; in 1917, Dooley, along with his star player Barney Lepper, took the team on a barnstorming tour of midwestern pro football teams. In 1918, the city's teams were not allowed to play outside the area because of the 1918 flu pandemic; Dooley and Lepper discontinued the All-Stars. Shoe salesman Warren D. Patterson, at the same time as this, formed a new team known as the Buffalo Niagaras, signing former Youngstown Patricians quarterback Ernest "Tommy" Hughitt as his quarterback. As the Niagaras, the team won a citywide championship in 1918, going undefeated with a 6–0–0 record (including a forfeit), having only one touchdown scored on them in any of their six games. They were one of the few upper-level teams still able to play games that year, with most of the top level teams (such as the Patricians, Canton Bulldogs and Massillon Tigers) all having suspended operations due to the pandemic and/or World War I player shortages; this allowed Buffalo to get a leg up on its Ohio competition and sign otherwise-unemployed players, setting a course for bringing the region on par with the Ohio League and the ultimate establishment of the NFL. With that, they could have theoretically staked a claim to being the best team in the nation, especially considering how the team would perform over the next three seasons, but the Professional Football Researchers Association is dismissive of any claim that does not come from the Ohio League, and gives the mythical "national title" to the Dayton Triangles, who also went undefeated that year. When the New York Pro Football League reopened in 1919, the team, now reorganized into a franchise known as the Prospects, defeated the Rochester Jeffersons for the league title in a two-game Thanksgiving weekend tournament. The two teams tied the Thanksgiving Day game, but Buffalo handily defeated Rochester 20–0 the following Sunday.

Lepper teamed up with Hughitt and Patterson in early 1920 to create the Buffalo All-Americans, then quickly sold the team to Frank McNeil, a somewhat abrasive and aggressive owner who was able to get the team into the National Football League for its first season. However records indicate he may not have actually entered his team into the American Professional Football Association until 1921, the All-Americans are generally shown as the third-place team in league standings from that year (the confusion stems from a statement in the minutes from the league's April 1921 reorganization meeting admitting an unidentified team from Buffalo; this may have instead been the Tonawanda Kardex, who joined the league in 1921, playing only one game). Patterson held on to the Prospects name and put together a lower quality team that played through 1923, including a 1922 game against the All-Americans themselves.

The All-Americans had success during its first couple of APFA seasons, posting a 9–1–1 regular season record in 1920, becoming the first professional NFL team to win by margins of 20 or more points in each of its first four games, an asterisked record which was not tied until the 2007 New England Patriots' offense duplicated the feat; the asterisk is because, in the early NFL, the All-Americans played five of its 11 games against non-league opponents.

Unique for a professional football team, the All-Americans had a sharing agreement with the Union Club of Phoenixville, a side project managed by All-Americans player Heinie Miller. Miller would take himself and seven other All-Americans to Phoenixville, Pennsylvania to play games on Saturdays (Pennsylvania had blue laws that prevented play on Sunday), and then return to Buffalo on Sundays. This sharing agreement lasted into 1921 when Miller formed the new Union Quakers of Philadelphia, but All-Americans owner Frank McNeil put a halt to the agreement halfway through the 1921 season after the Quakers played the Canton Bulldogs and wore out the All-Americans players. Five All-Americans left the team to play for the Quakers full-time; Buffalo had the pickings of the then-defunct Detroit Tigers to replenish their roster.

In 1920, the Akron Pros held the All-Americans to a scoreless tie in front of only 3,000 fans. At the game, Akron owners Frank Nied and Art Ranney agreed to sell Bob Nash to Buffalo for $300 and five per cent of the gate, in the first known player deal between NFL clubs.

Along with the Decatur Staleys and Akron Pros, Buffalo claimed a share of the 1920 league title. That same season the Pros held the best record in the league, and only had to avoid losing a game. Meanwhile, Buffalo and the Staleys had to win in order to capture the AFPA Championship. The Pros were able to hold the Staleys to a scoreless tie at Cub Park. However, the Pros still had to play the All-Americans who were fresh from a 7–3 win over the Canton Bulldogs at New York City's Polo Grounds. Despite Buffalo's confidence going into the match, the Pros also held the All-Americans to scoreless tie.

Both the All-Americans and the Staleys complained about the championship, arguing that Akron had only tied, but not defeated them. However, Joseph Carr (then serving only as owner of his Columbus Panhandles team) moved at the league's meeting in April 1921 to give Akron the sole title and the rights to the Brunswick-Balke Collender Cup. The motion was accepted, and Buffalo finished in third place, with Chicago in second place. The only loss Buffalo had was against the Canton Bulldogs in 1920. According to modern NFL tie-breaking rules, the 1920 Buffalo All-Americans would be co-champions. They would be tied with the Akron Pros in win percentage, 9 1⁄2 losses (.864), both teams beating out the Decatur Staleys, who would have a season that counted 11 wins to 2 losses (.846).

+1⁄2 wins to 1On November 27, 1921, the All-Americans claimed the AFPA title with a record of 9–0–2. However, for reason still unknown, owner Frank McNeil agreed to play two more games. He did tell the Buffalo media that the two games were exhibitions and would have no bearing on the team's claim to the AFPA title. George Halas and the Chicago Staleys manage to capture second place in the AFPA in 1921, with their only loss of the season against Buffalo. McNeil scheduled the two additional games against the Pros and Staleys back-to-back. The first game was scheduled for December 3 against the tough Pros, after which his team would take an all-night train to Chicago to play the Staleys the next day.

The All-Americans defeated the Pros, arriving in Chicago worn out and in no condition to play the Staleys, and lost. McNeil still believed his team was the AFPA's 1921 champion, and even invested in tiny gold footballs for his players to commemorate the achievement. However Halas declared that the title was Chicago's, basing his claim on his belief that the second game of the Buffalo-Chicago series mattered more than the first. He also pointed out that the aggregate score of the two games was 16–14 in favor of the Staleys. McNeil insisted the Buffalo All-Americans were the champions, still maintaining that the last two games his team played were merely exhibitions. It didn't matter. The league awarded the championship by a vote of the Association's executive committee in January 1922 to the Staleys.

This episode is referred to by several sports historians and Buffalo sports fans as the "Staley Swindle." McNeil eventually went to his grave trying to get the league's decision overturned. In their decision, based on a generally accepted (but now obsolete) rule that if two teams play each other more than once in a season, the second game counts more than the first, the executive committee followed established tradition. Had Buffalo not played the last game, they would have had an undefeated season and won the title.

Under the leadership of player-coach Tommy Hughitt, the All-Americans, though they never equaled the success of the first two seasons, continued to post winning records in 1922 and 1923. Star running back Ockie Anderson's knees deteriorated during the 1922 season, forcing his early retirement and beginning the team's decline. In 1924, owner Frank McNeil sold the team back to Hughitt and Warren D. Patterson, who immediately changed the team name to Bisons (a stock name for Buffalo sports teams) and signed several players (Pete Calac, Benny Boynton and Jim Ailinger being among them) to make another run at the title. After starting the season 6–2, the team lost their last three to once again end up marginally above .500. Hughitt retired at the end of the season. After Hughitt's retirement at the end of the 1924 season, the team struggled for the rest of its lifespan.

Jim Kendrick announced his "Buffalo Rangers" experiment, fielding an exhibition team of players from Texas and the Southwestern United States for the 1926 season. His plan was that this exhibition squad would then represent Buffalo in the NFL. Because most of the players were Texans, the team was nicknamed the "Rangers" in deference to the state's legendary peacekeeping force. Along with the West Coast's Los Angeles Buccaneers and the South's Louisville Colonels, it was one of three teams that represented cities outside the NFL's existing footprint. The Buffalo media alternately referred to the team as the "Bison Rangers," combining the old name with the new so that fans might more easily identify with the team that was on its third name in seven years. The one-year experiment brought a 4–4–2 (.500) season. Buffalo expected Kendrick to return to field the Rangers for the 1927 season, however he signed with the New York Giants, and most of the remaining players went their separate ways, citing their dislike for Buffalo's cold winters as the primary reason for leaving.

1927 season. After five games (all losses, all but one being a shutout), the team suspended operations and failed to finish the season. The team did not return to play in 1928, but returned in 1929 with former Oorang Indian Al Jolley as coach. Among their players that year was Jess Rodriguez, the first Hispanic-American player in the NFL (the Frankford Yellow Jackets had hired Ignacio "Lou" Molinet two years prior, but Molinet was a Cuban national). Much like in 1927, the Bisons failed to win a game until their final game, when in a case of cosmic irony they upset the Chicago Bears 19–7; thus, the very team that had spoiled their undefeated season in 1921 saved them from the indignity of a winless season in 1929. With the Great Depression underway, the Bisons folded, never to return again. During the season, the Bisons set an NFL record of six consecutive games without ever having a lead in regulation play. The record was tied in 2012 by the Kansas City Chiefs.

At least one further game against an NFL team was played in Buffalo in the wake of the Bisons' failure: the independent Buffalo Bears narrowly lost, 8–6, to the Cleveland Indians in a 1931 contest. Buffalo would become a regular "neutral site" for NFL exhibitions from 1938 to 1958. The team has no official relation to future Buffalo pro football franchises: the Buffalo Indians and Tigers of the third American Football League, the Buffalo Bisons of the AAFC, or the Buffalo Bills of today which was one of the new AFL teams (formation announced in 1959) that first played in 1960.

The History Of The Dayton Triangles

The Dayton Triangles were an original franchise of the American Professional Football Association (now the National Football League (NFL)) in 1920. The Triangles were based in Dayton, Ohio, and took their nickname from their home field, Triangle Park, which was located at the confluence of the Great Miami and Stillwater Rivers in north Dayton. They were the longest-lasting traveling team in the NFL (1920–1929), and the last such "road team" until the Dallas Texans in 1952, who, coincidentally, descended from the Dayton franchise and whose players and assets were moved to Baltimore and eventually Indianapolis where they now operate as the Colts, just 117 miles to the west of their origin, keeping their color scheme through the years and, ultimately, never missing a season in some form.

The original Dayton Triangles members first began playing together as basketball players at St. Mary's College, now the University of Dayton, from 1908 until 1912. After graduation, the players organized a basketball team of alumni, students, and other local athletes. They went by the name of the St. Mary's Cadets. The Cadets claimed the title of "World Basketball Champions" by defeating the Buffalo German Ramblers.

In the fall of 1913, the St. Marys Cadets organized a football team. The team was coached by Louis Clark, who coached the St. Mary's college football team as well. Al Mahrt was elected team captain. The team finished its first season with a 7–0 record and won the Dayton City Championship. It also won the Southern Ohio Championship by defeating the Cincinnati Celts 27–0 at Redland Park. The team won a second city championship in 1914, despite injuries to Al Mahrt and Babe Zimmerman. In 1915 the team changed its name to the Dayton Gym-Cadets after their presumed sponsors, the Dayton Gymnastic Club. That season saw Al Marhrt take over as the team's coach. The team only lost one game that season, to the Columbus Panhandles. It also won its third city championship. The team would play in the Ohio League from 1913-1919 before entering APFA (which later changed its name to the NFL in 1922).

At the first meetings held on August 20, 1920 and September 17, 1920 at Ralph Hay's Hupmobile dealership located in Canton, Ohio, the Triangles were represented by their manager Carl Storck as they became charter members of the new league called the American Professional Football Association (APFA), until 1922 when it was renamed the National Football League. During the latter meeting, Jim Thorpe was unanimously elected as the new league's president. Also at this meeting, a membership fee of $ 100 per team was established, however George Halas stated that none of the charter teams ever paid it.

On October 3, 1920, the Triangles won what could be considered the very first APFA/NFL game, with a 14–0 defeat of the Columbus Panhandles at Triangle Park. The high point of the Triangles' 1920 season was a 20–20 tie at Triangle Park with Thorpe's Canton Bulldogs; it was the first time a team had scored three touchdowns on the Bulldogs since 1915. Trailing the Triangles, 20–14, Thorpe nailed two late field goals to tie the score. Six games into the season, the Triangles remained undefeated (4–0–2) but in the final three games lost twice to eventual league champion, the Akron Pros, ending 1920 with a 5–2–2 mark.

In 1922, the other teams in the NFL were recruiting and signing top college players from around the country; however Dayton continued to use mainly local players. This marked a decline in the team's performance, and the Triangles ceased being competitive in the NFL. Because of their poor showing on the field, the Triangles were not able to draw crowds for home games: Triangle Park, with a seating capacity of 5,000, rarely saw that many fans. Soon, the combination of poor home gates and the lure of $2,500 guarantees to play at larger venues (like Wrigley Field, Comiskey Park and the Polo Grounds), made the Triangles primarily a traveling team.

By the late twenties, Dayton was one of the league's doormats, winning just five of their 51 NFL contests from 1923 through 1929. Only the revenues from playing on the road kept them afloat. Also around this time, the NFL began shaking off its roots in mid-sized mid-western cities. Although the Triangles were one of only three original NFL teams (along with the Bears and Cardinals) to survive the 1920s, and the only team from the Ohio League to survive past 1926, it soon became apparent that Dayton was not big enough to support a team in the burgeoning league. Finally, on July 12, 1930, a Brooklyn-based syndicate headed by Bill Dwyer bought the Triangles; the franchise moved to Brooklyn and was renamed the Brooklyn Dodgers. Jack Depler was a co-owner and new coach of the Dodgers who had been a coach-player for the NFL's Orange Tornadoes. He took most of the members of the 1929 Tornadoes with him for the new Dodgers team.

Due to numerous transactions over the years, the Triangles have a tenuous connection to the current NFL. The Dodgers merged with the Boston Yanks franchise for the 1945 season due to player shortages. In 1946, Brooklyn's owner jumped to the AAFC and played as the New York Yankees. The Boston Yanks remained in the NFL, and in 1949 moved to New York and became the New York Bulldogs. Also in 1949, the AAFC Yankees merged with the Brooklyn Dodgers and played as the Brooklyn-New York Yankees. When the AAFC merged with the NFL, the Yankees players were divided between the New York Giants and the New York Bulldogs (who were renamed the New York Yanks).

A failure at the box office, the Yanks were "sold back" to the NFL in 1952 and awarded to a group from Texas, who moved it to Dallas for the 1952 season as the Dallas Texans. The Texans failed after one year and were again sold back to the NFL, who folded the Texans franchise. Its remains were awarded to an ownership group in Baltimore to form the (new) Baltimore Colts. The Colts moved to Indianapolis in 1984 and are still playing as the Indianapolis Colts. The NFL currently does not consider the Colts to be a continuation of any of its past incarnations, including the Triangles.

During the 1970s, the Dayton Triangles Soccer Club revived the name and enjoyed some success and recognition as a successful youth (and later semi-pro) soccer club. Like the football team, they took their name from the same city park and played an important role in development of soccer in the Miami Valley.

In 1973, the Dayton Triangles RFC club was founded. Like the aforementioned soccer club, this team also took its name from the original football team and city park. Through various amalgamations over the years, the club is still active under the name of the Dayton Area Rugby Club.

The team has one member in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Greasy Neale but because of his coaching career with Philadelphia Eagles. He played as an End in the Ohio League with the Dayton Triangles in 1918.

The Beginnings Of The Seattle Seahawks

 As per one of the agreed parts of the 1970 AFL–NFL merger, the NFL began planning to expand from 26 to 28 teams. In June 1972, Seattle Professional Football Inc., a group of Seattle business and community leaders, announced its intention to acquire an NFL franchise for the city of Seattle. In June 1974, the NFL gave the city an expansion franchise. That December, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle announced the official signing of the franchise agreement by Lloyd W. Nordstrom, representing the Nordstrom family as majority partners for the consortium.

In March 1975, John Thompson, former Executive Director of the NFL Management Council and a former Washington Huskies executive, was hired as the general manager of the new team. The name Seattle Seahawks was selected on June 17, 1975 after a public naming contest which drew more than 20,000 entries and over 1,700 names.

The Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers each selected 39 players in an expansion draft held on March 30-31, 1976. The other 26 NFL teams each froze 29 players from its roster. Seattle and Tampa Bay alternated selections from the remaining pool of players. When the first player was chosen from a team, that team then froze two new players. The Buccaneers and Seahawks continued with their selections until three players had been picked from each of the existing teams.

Thompson recruited and hired Jack Patera, a Minnesota Vikings assistant coach, to be the first head coach of the Seahawks; the hiring was announced on January 3, 1976. The expansion draft was held March 30–31, 1976, with Seattle and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers alternating picks for rounds selecting unprotected players from the other 26 teams in the league. The Seahawks were awarded the 2nd overall pick in the 1976 draft, a pick they used on defensive tackle Steve Niehaus. The team took the field for the first time on August 1, 1976 in a pre-season game against the San Francisco 49ers in the then newly opened Kingdome.

The Seahawks are the only NFL team to switch conferences twice in the post-merger era. The franchise began play in 1976 in the aforementioned NFC West but switched conferences with the Buccaneers after one season and joined the AFC West. This realignment was dictated by the league as part of the 1976 expansion plan, so that both expansion teams could play each other twice and every other NFL franchise once (the ones in their conference at the time) during their first two seasons. The Seahawks won both matchups against the Buccaneers in their first two seasons, the former of which was the Seahawks' first regular season victory.

However, before the Seahawks even played their first game, tragedy struck, as the team's owner Lloyd W. Nordstrom died from a heart attack while vacationing in Mexico. Nordstrom had been instrumental in landing an NFL team in the Pacific Northwest, and hiring the front office, but he never had a chance to see his team take the field. The Seahawks, coached by Jack Patera, played their first game on September 12 in a sold-out Kingdome. The Seahawks played a solid game, but had their desperation final pass intercepted in the endzone in a 30–24 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals. The Seahawks would go on to lose their first five games, before beating the 

Buccaneers, their brothers in expansion, 13–10 in Tampa on October 17. Three weeks later, the Seahawks would earn their first home victory by beating the Atlanta Falcons 30–13 behind the 124-yard effort of running back Sherman Smith. These two wins would be the only ones in the season, as the first-year team compiled a record of 2–12, making them the worst team in the NFC. The only team they were better than was the 0-14 Buccaneers.

The strike-shortened 1982 season proved to be a transitional year for all of pro football, but no club fit the transitional description better than the Seahawks. Patera was removed after six-plus years as head coach. Mike McCormack finished the season as interim head coach and then was replaced in 1983 by Chuck Knox, who guided the Seahawks to an 83-67-0 record in nine seasons up through the 1991 campaign.

Knox led the Seahawks to the AFC championship game his first season. Seattle won an AFC West wild-card berth for the first time in its eight-year history and then knocked off Denver and Miami before losing to the Los Angeles Raiders 30-14 in the title game. The team would be competitive the next two years but it took until 2005 for the team to reach its first Super Bowl and in 2013 the team won Super Bowl 48.

The Seattle Seahawks are now one of the most respected franchises in the NFL and in the 21st century the team has compiled one of the best records in the National Football League.

The Only Team In NFL History To Have Two Undefeated Seasons - The History Of The Canton Bulldogs

The Canton Bulldogs were a professional American football team, based in Canton, Ohio. They played in the Ohio League from 1903 to 1906 and 1911 to 1919, and the American Professional Football Association (later renamed the National Football League (NFL) in 1922), from 1920 to 1923, and again from 1925 to 1926. The Bulldogs won the 1916, 1917 and 1919 Ohio League championships.

As a result of the Bulldogs' early success, along with the league being founded in the city, the Pro Football Hall of Fame is located in Canton. Jim Thorpe, the Olympian and renowned all-around athlete, was Canton's most-recognized player in the pre-NFL era.

Prior to the debut of professional football in the city, an amateur team from Canton was mentioned as being a superior team in Stark County, Ohio. Until about 1902, this team competed with the Akron East Ends for the Ohio Independent Championship. When the Massillon Tigers arrived on the scene and went professional, Canton, as an amateur team, was no longer competitive. The Canton Bulldogs were officially established on November 15, 1904 as the Canton Athletic Club, a club designed to operate baseball and football teams. The statement stated that the football team was to be a "professional organization," complete with a "professional coach."

The Canton Bulldogs started play from 1904 to 1906, although it did not become known as the Bulldogs until 1906. Following the 1906 season, the team disbanded. In 1911, a new professional football team, the Professionals, began play in Canton. In 1915, this team changed its name to the Bulldogs in honor of the earlier team. The new Canton Bulldogs became the unofficial world champions in 1916, 1917, and 1919. In 1920, the Canton Bulldogs joined the newly created National Football League. Jim Thorpe, a Bulldogs player, was this league’s first president. After scheduling a showcase game between Canton and the Buffalo All-Americans in New York City in December 1920, Thorpe left the Bulldogs at the end of the 1920 season.

In the APFA, the Bulldogs found the competition somewhat tougher than expected. Canton had a respectable 9–5–4 record over the next two seasons. The APFA became the National Football League in 1922 and Hay hired Guy Chamberlin as Canton's player-coach. Chamberlin rebuilt the Bulldogs into a championship team. He kept just five players from the 1921 squad. As a player Chamberlin led his team past the Chicago Cardinals in 1922 by blocking a punt that set up a touchdown, and running back two interceptions for touchdowns to beat the Cards' 20–3. The Bulldogs went on to win back-to-back NFL championships in 1922 and 1923. Both seasons the team did record a single loss.

However, Canton suffered several setbacks in 1923. First Hay announced that he was stepping down as the team's manager. His asking price for the team was $1,500, which was decided to be about $500 more than the 1922 champions were worth. Things were still up in the air when Hay and Chamberlin left for Chicago to represent the Bulldogs at the league's summer meeting. When Ralph Hay returned to Canton, he sold the Bulldogs on a group of local businessmen who formed the Canton Athletic Company to run the team. Chamberlin stayed on as coach, assuring the team of success on the field. As the payroll for Canton players became too expensive, the team lost about $13,000 in 1923 and the Canton Athletic Company sold the franchise in August for $2,500 to Cleveland promoter Samuel Deutsch, owner of the NFL's Cleveland Indians. He added seven players from Canton, renamed his team the Cleveland Bulldogs.

In 1924, Sam Deutsch, the owner of the NFL's Cleveland Indians, bought the Canton Bulldogs. He took the Bulldogs name and its players to Cleveland and named his franchise the Cleveland Bulldogs. He offered to sell the Canton franchise back to the city of Canton to play in the 1924 season; however, there were no buyers interested in the team. He "mothballed" the Canton club. The Canton Bulldogs were re-established in 1925, and the NFL considers the 1925 to 1926 Canton Bulldogs to be the same team as the 1920 to 1923 incarnation.

Before the 1927 season, the league decided to purge itself of some of the weaker franchises. Twelve teams were jettisoned, including Canton and three other charter members of the APFA. Despite the Bulldogs folding in 1927, the team's heritage played a major role in Canton's selection as the location of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. First, the NFL was organized in a Canton automobile showroom on September 17, 1920. Secondly, the Canton Bulldogs were one of the early powers of pro football both before and after 1920. An NFL charter member, the Bulldogs became the new league’s first two-time champions with undefeated seasons in 1922 and 1923. Finally Jim Thorpe, the first big-name athlete to play pro football, began his pro tenure with the 1915 Canton Bulldogs.

An unrelated "Canton Bulldogs" team played in the United Football League in 1964. This team's name was coincidental, as it had moved from Cleveland and kept its original nickname. That team moved to Philadelphia, where it became the "Philadelphia Bulldogs." All in all, this version of the Cleveland-Canton-Philadelphia Bulldogs played from 1961 to 1966, its last two years in Philadelphia as a member of the Continental Football League. Another "Canton Bulldogs" team was slated to begin play in the Stars Football League in 2012, although that team was never organized. The Bulldogs name is also in use at Canton McKinley High School.

In late 1959, the citizens of Canton responded enthusiastically to a Canton Repository editorial that pointed out why a Hall of Fame should be located in their city. The city's foundations and individuals banded together to first win site designation from the NFL and then raise $378,026 to actually build a hall of fame on wooded parkland donated by the city. Ground-breaking was held in August, 1962, and the Hall was opened on September 7, 1963.

The Beginnings Of The Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Expansion of the National Football League to twenty-eight teams was an agreed part of the AFL/NFL merger of 1970 and confirmed at the end of that season, but attempts to carry it out did not materialize until after the 1973 season, when it was announced that Tampa would be the first city to get an expansion franchise, at a cost of $16 million. Part of the reason for the delay was due to uncertainties in a few of the newly integrated teams’ stadiums due to new NFL capacity requirements; both the Buffalo Bills and Boston Patriots had stadiums inadequate for the NFL, so that Tampa interests unsuccessfully courted both teams to move to the Tampa Bay area. Once Rich and Schaefer Stadiums were built for the Bills and Patriots respectively, the league was stable enough to begin expanding.

Originally the proposed Tampa Bay expansion franchise was awarded to Tom McCloskey, a construction company owner from Philadelphia. McCloskey quickly became dissatisfied with the financial arrangement with the NFL, and backed out of the deal a month later. Hugh Culverhouse, a wealthy tax attorney from Jacksonville, who had failed in his bid to buy the Los Angeles Rams due to an unannounced sale to Robert Irsay, instead received the Tampa franchise.

A name-the-team contest resulted in the name “Buccaneers”, a reference to the pirates who frequented Florida's Gulf coast during the 17th century,

The Buccaneers joined the NFL as members of the AFC West in 1976. The following year, they were moved to the NFC Central, while the other 1976 expansion team, the Seattle Seahawks, switched conferences with Tampa Bay and joined the AFC West. This realignment was dictated by the league as part of the 1976 expansion plan, so that both teams could play each other twice and every other NFL franchise once during their first two seasons.

Longtime USC coach John McKay was recruited as the team's first head coach. McKay had never been a fan of the NFL and turned down three previous offers for a coaching position, but was finally convinced after being offered a $3 million contract and the challenge of building a new team from scratch. He stressed a five-year plan that relied on veteran players, quality draft picks, and patience. However, the expansion draft prior to the entrance of the Bucs and Seahawks into the league was not as generous as it would become for later NFL expansion teams, so the Buccaneers were saddled with aging veterans and castoffs from other teams. Despite McKay's coaching, the Bucs often appeared incompetent, with missed tackles, fumbled snaps, and a frustrating inability to score, and the patience of fans and local media soon wore thin. McKay was also criticized for relying too much on the USC playbook—for example, the “student body right” rushing play—not to mention choosing running back Ricky Bell over future NFL Hall of Famer Tony Dorsett in the 1977 NFL Draft.

This frustration, and even anger, that Buccaneer fans targeted at McKay – which prompted the brief popularity of bumper stickers that proclaimed “Throw McKay in the Bay” – stemmed from the team's notorious 26-game regular season losing streak, including a then-record 0–14 season (a record since broken by the 2008 Detroit Lions and 2017 Cleveland Browns who each finished 0–16). The 1976 Bucs are widely considered one of the worst NFL teams of all time. They were shut out five times and scored only 125 points the entire season, an average of nine per game, while giving up 412. The Buccaneers suffered so many injuries that they were forced to hire players off the street and from the CFL. The team became the butt of many jokes, especially from Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, but also from fans themselves, who late into the 1977 season, wore bags on their heads and encouraged the team to “go for 0”, as in zero wins. 

The 1977 season started even worse as the Buccaneers were shut out six times. In Week 13 the Bucs finally managed to win their first regular-season game (the team had beaten the Atlanta Falcons 17–3 in a 1976 pre-season game), defeating the New Orleans Saints on the road 33–14. The win was highlighted by three interceptions returned for touchdowns, an NFL record at the time. The team would later equal this feat 25 years later when they defeated the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl XXXVII. Saints QB Archie Manning had said that it would be a disgrace to lose to Tampa Bay, and after the game was over the Buccaneers players taunted him by chanting “It’s disgraceful!”. Manning to this day disputes the charge that he said this. Others have noted that clever coach McKay may have made the statement up to motivate the team. After being greeted by 8,000 cheering fans when the team arrived back in Tampa late that evening after the game, the Bucs followed up the victory with a win at home over the St. Louis Cardinals during the final week of the season. Afterwards, a mob of fans ran onto the field and tore down the goalposts. There 0-26 start is one of the most famous records in sports but what is often forgotten is it is not the longest losing streak in the NFL. The Cardinals in the early to mid 40s during World War II lost 29 straight games.

The 1978 season was another losing campaign, but it was highlighted by the presence of rookie quarterback Doug Williams. Despite a season-ending injury in which his mouth had to be wired shut, he showed enough potential to give Bucs fans hope for the future. His leadership and often electrifying play would transform the team much sooner than anyone expected. Injuries led to a 5–11 record, but for the first time the Buccaneers began to resemble a real team.

The Bucs’ situation improved rapidly in 1979. With the maturation of quarterback Doug Williams, the first 1,000-yard rushing season from running back Ricky Bell, and a smothering, league-leading defense led by future NFL Hall of Famer Lee Roy Selmon, the Bucs kicked off the season with five consecutive victories, a stunning performance that landed them on the cover of Sports Illustrated. With four games left in the season, the Bucs only needed to win one of them to make the playoffs, and did so in their final contest at home against the Kansas City Chiefs, which was played in the worst downpour in Bucs history. Finishing with a 10–6 record, the Bucs had their first winning season, and indeed won the Central Division in a tiebreaker over the Chicago Bears. In an upset, the Bucs defeated the Philadelphia Eagles 24–17 in the divisional round of the playoffs. Because the Los Angeles Rams defeated the Dallas Cowboys in the other NFC playoff game, the Bucs hosted the NFC Championship Game the following week in Tampa. The Bucs lost to the Rams 9–0, thanks to great defense by the Rams. In only their fourth season, the Bucs seemed on the verge of fulfilling McKay's five-year plan.

The Buccaneers in the next decade and a half would be one of the worst teams in the league. It would take until 1997 for the team to be a consistent contender finally winning a Super Bowl in the 2002 season and winning a second Super Bowl in 2020.

Here is a short trailer of the expansion of the franchise done by NFL Films.