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Warren Sapp was a lot of fun as a player, and nothing has changed since his retirement

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Still Larger Than Life

Dec 03, 2008 - From his charming turn on Dancing With the Stars to his uncomprising work as an analyst for the burgeoning NFL Network, Warren Sapp has found plenty of outlets for his considerable talents this fall, his first without football in a long, long time.

Sapp is in no danger of being forgotten by Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans — as one of the defining players of his era, he helped the Buccaneers rise from insignificance to championship status — but he's also not likely to fade quietly from the public consciousness.

Sapp lives life large and loud, and he obviously loves it. He was the same way on the field in his nine seasons as a Buccaneer, and his 13 years overall as a dominant player in the NFL. He recently delighted millions of Americans — football fans or not — with his runner-up performance on DWTS, and reminded Bucs fans what a joy it was to watch him play.

On March 6 of this year, Sapp officially announced his retirement from the NFL. As such, Buccaneers.com, which received an exclusive interview with the 1999 NFL Defensive Player of the Year, takes a long look back at his amazing playing career and how it will be remembered by the people who were there.

**

Over the course of one long afternoon in 1995 — a sometimes frustrating but ultimately satisfying afternoons — two young football rivals became teammates.

They had battled each other for years as Florida high schoolers and collegians, but now the two had joined forces, without even having to leave their shared home state.

"Absolutely I would say he's a Hall of Famer. When you combine everything — the talent, the leadership, his locker-room presence, his ability to rise up and play his best in special games — you see that. He had special qualities."

It was April 22 and the first few hours of the 1995 NFL Draft. It was a bold Tampa Bay Buccaneers brain trust that would bring Apopka native and University of Miami star Warren Sapp together with Pensacola's son, Florida State standout Derrick Brooks. The Buccaneers assumed some risk in doing so, trading up and down several times in the first round to end up with Sapp, a surprising slider in the top half of the picks, and Brooks, an "undersized" linebacker near the end of the round.

The risk returned an enormous reward, however. Sapp and Brooks became cornerstones of a legendary defense, along with 1993 draftee John Lynch. They were the players upon which new owner Malcolm Glazer, new Head Coach Tony Dungy and finally Dungy's successor Jon Gruden would build a championship. Many consider both Sapp and Brooks to be shoo-ins for the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Almost 13 years after that fateful April day in 1995, Sapp, Brooks and Lynch stood together at a podium in the Club Lounge of Raymond James Stadium, the Bucs' home. All three were dressed to the nines, on hand for a black-tie gala prompted by the retirement of fullback Mike Alstott, their long-time Bucs teammate. The evening was a celebration of everything Alstott represented for the franchise and the Bay area, and rightfully so.

Brooks was the last of the three to speak and, as expected, he shared several amusing anecdotes about his time with Alstott. But before he left the stage, he had one more thing on his agenda. Throwing one arm around Sapp's shoulders, Brooks brought his old teammate back up to the podium for another announcement.

The news had leaked about a week earlier, but Sapp wouldn't make it official with his current team, the Oakland Raiders, until a few days later: He, too, was retiring from the NFL. As fate would have it, his official announcement would fall on the same day that Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre also hung up his cleatsâ€¦at least temporarily. At the time, that seemed quite fitting, as Sapp and Favre often served as competitive foils for each other at the absolute peaks of their respective careers.

Of course, retiring on the same day as Favre also meant Sapp's announcement was a bit swamped by the waves of reaction articles to the Packer's announcement. But as Brooks, Lynch and Sapp stood in front of a room filled with hundreds of players, coaches and others who had been along for the Bucs' wild ride over the past decade, it was clear to that audience how monumental Sapp's impact had been.

Brooks said it simply enough, prompting a standing ovation: "Everybody knows what Warren meant to this franchise and meant to the game of football."

Indeed, everyone knew. Sapp's NFL career ended on March 6, after 13 seasons in the league. His nine seasons as a Buccaneer ended on March 20, 2004, when he signed with the Oakland Raiders as an unrestricted free agent. His impact on the game, and on a once-moribund franchise on the West Coast of Florida, will last far beyond 1998.

And it all started on that frenetic day of draft maneuvering in April, 1995.

**

The Buccaneers went into the 1995 draft clearly focused on getting defensive help, having finished no higher than 21st on that side of the ball in three years. They owned the seventh overall pick but, early in the spring, saw little hope of getting the two big in-state defensive line prospects, Florida's Kevin Carter and Miami's Sapp. Carter was thought to be a top-five pick (he went sixth, to the newly-minted St. Louis Rams), and Sapp was at one point considered a good bet to be the first overall pick, by the expansion Carolina Panthers.

That's when things got crazy.

For Sapp, that would be 'crazy' in the bizarre and upsetting sense. Rumors of multiple failed drug tests surfaced before the draft, the meat of which Sapp vehemently denied. The NFL was said to have sent a memo on the subject to all of the team's on the eve of the draft, which the NFL also denied.

Sapp was angry and bitter — he said he would submit to daily drug testing to prove that he was clean — and in a free-fall. One of a handful of players invited to New York on draft weekend for the hand-shake-and-hat-donning scene, he languished at his table, wearing a suit and an increasingly pained expression as team after team passed. Sapp seemed most irritated by the Jets, who had a need at defensive tackle but went instead with tight end Kyle Brady at number nine, to the horror and dismay of the vocal Jets fans in the gallery.

Said Sapp at the time: "I'm up here waiting for the draft and everything is blowing up underneath me. There's always somebody looking to knock you off a pedestal. I'm glad the Buccaneers took a chance on me and I won't let them down. Believe that."

The Bucs, meanwhile, got crazy on draft weekend in the inventive and unpredictable sense. When Carter went to the Rams at No. 6, they traded down with Philadelphia to No. 12, picking up a pair of extra second-round picks in the process (and giving up a third). They would later use one of those second-rounders plus their own pick in the round to move back up to No. 28 in the first round and get Brooks. All of that maneuvering landed the team two likely Hall of Famers in the same round, which is practically unthinkable.

When Sapp was still on the board at No. 12 — and still seething at his table in the Madison Square Garden's Paramount Theater — it was a no-brainer for the Buccaneers. They had done their homework on Sapp, and none of the eleventh-hour allegations, true or not, came as any surprise.

If it was a gamble, it paid off enormously. Sapp was every bit the player the scouts said, and so was Brooks, for that matter. Teaming with Lynch, who had arrived two years earlier, they became known as The Big Three upon which the Bucs' resurgence would be built. There were many others who eventually became equally important to the turnaround — Ronde Barber, Hardy Nickerson, Mike Alstott and Shelton Quarles, to name a few — but Sapp, Brooks and Lynch were always at the heart of it. Sapp provided the Bucs with a force of nature at the key position on their soon-to-be legendary defense — under tackle — and also inspired and led the team with his unrestrained confidence.

"Warren was a warrior," said Kiffin. "He came to work every day fired up. He's just a special guy who loves football. The guy knows the history of the game and he's unbelievably intelligent. He took the 3-technique to another level. Along with Brooks and Lynch, he turned this program around."

He wasn't always easy to deal with — for coaches, especially — but the root of his passion was always a desire to play for a champion.

“Oh, he’s awesome," said Rod Marinelli, Sapp's defensive line coach from 1996-2003 and now the Detroit Lions' head coach. "You’ve just got to know who he is. That’s why we won — because of that personality he had. He knew everybody’s position on the field. The talent, the power, the explosion, the feet, the awareness, the feel for the game — nobody has it. But what he also had: he was intelligent. Probably one of the most intelligent players I’ve ever been around. The guy’s extremely bright. He’ll do anything. When he’s retired now and he goes on and whatever he plans on doing — he’ll be an â€˜A’ in everything he does because he’s that smart. He sees situations, I think he can adjust really quick — adapt to all situations — he’s well-spoken, he loves football. He loves all sports. I mean, this guy knows the history of college baseball. There’s nothing he doesn’t know and that’s what makes it fun.”

The Bucs' approaching good fortunes weren't immediately obvious in 1995, however. Malcolm Glazer had just purchased the team, a transaction that would be finalized by the NFL over the summer. Sam Wyche was left in place for a fourth season to coach the '95 team, but then unsurprisingly relieved at the end of that 7-9 campaign. Tony Dungy and Monte Kiffin would come on to help the Glazer family transform the Bucs' entire cultureâ€¦but the Bucs of early 1995 weren't necessarily the ideal landing spot for a young player wanting to dominate the league.

"That was a place where they always said careers came to die," said Sapp. "Anthony Munoz came to Tampa and his career died, and so did Dexter Manley and some of the other players. Guys that had great careers came to Tampa for that one last hurrah or to salvage their careers or whatever it was. But it was where careers came to die, and that was the knock on it."

Tampa Bay is no longer that place; far from it. These days, the Bucs are a rumored destination for almost every big name that hits the market — hello again, Brett Favre! — and one of the most consistent playoff-chasers in the NFL. Sapp helped that come to be; he helped the dying grounds become a breeding ground.

Dungy knew that had to be the case when he first settled into old One Buccaneer Place, having come over from the Minnesota Vikings, where he was a highly-respected defensive coordinator. The new coach called Sapp into his office in his early days in Tampa and told him that, if a turnaround was going to happen, he would have to be at the center of it.

"Warren came from the University of Miami with a winning mindset," recalled Dungy, now the Indianapolis Colts' head coach. "Derrick came in the same year from Florida State. Here we had two guys who were used to winning and took losing very hard, and we needed them to stay that way. That was probably the beginning of it. They didn't like to lose — Warren never saw himself as a loser — and they saw the organization as a championship organization even before we could tangibly feel it and see it. He was a big, big part of turning things around down there."

Added Marinelli: "Our team took over his personality. He had a swagger, confidence, toughness and he would always show when the game was on the line — that’s the best thing I loved about him. When the game was on the line, I don’t care if it was 110 degrees out and he was dead tired, a fourth-quarter pass rusher — â€˜put it on me.’ That’s what makes him special. To me, this guy’s a first-ballot Hall of Famer.”

The Bucs started 0-5 under Dungy in 1996 but stayed the course and came on strong over the second half of the year. The Big Three famously gathered in a hotel room in San Diego — eventually, the site of their greatest triumph — and laid down the gauntlet after hearing their team referred to as "The Yucks" one too many times on ESPN. Sapp, Brooks and Lynch vowed then and there to turn the team around, and the following day led the Bucs' most spirited game of the year, a 25-17 comeback win over the Chargers.

That set the stage for the franchise's coming-out party in 1997. Tampa Bay was the talk of the NFL after the first month, thanks to a 5-0 start that included a signpost victory over Steve Young and the San Francisco 49ers and a pair of road wins within the division. That season would end in the Bucs' first postseason appearance in 18 years, and a home playoff win over Detroit that would officially close down old Tampa Stadium.

In 1998, the Bucs moved into Raymond James Stadium, the magnificence of which immediately earned it the nickname, "The Crown Jewel of the NFL." The team had put on its new, edgier uniforms and adopted red and pewter as its colors the year before. And in 1999 it would ride Warren Sapp — the NFL's Defensive Player of the Year — and the league's number-three ranked defense to the NFC Championship Game. After winning its first division title in 20 years, the Bucs came within five minutes of upsetting the powerful Rams and going to the Super Bowl.

That ultimate goal would have to wait, but those young men who had made a pact in a San Diego hotel room had clearly followed through.

"When they called us those 'Yucks' in '96 in San Diego, me and Brooks looked at each other and said, 'That's the last damn time they're going to call us that,'" said Sapp with a laugh. "Then we went to work on it. Six years later we were holding the Vince Lombardi Trophy and now they call Tampa 'Titletown' or something like that, right? How beautiful is that? A place where you wouldn't be caught dead with the paraphernalia on unless you were a construction worker or going to lay sod or something all day. I mean, it was a shirt you didn't care if it got messed up."

The Bucs made the playoffs again in 2000 and 2001, but exited quickly both times. After the second Wild Card loss in Philadelphia in '01, Dungy was let go and team ownership pulled off an amazing coup by prying Jon Gruden from the Raiders.

That put the Bucs over the top, as they steamed through the 2002 season — again riding a fantastic defense, this time ranked No. 1 in the league — and captured the first Super Bowl title in franchise history. Tampa Bay demolished Oakland in Super Bowl XXXVII in San Diego and made enduring heroes of its core players, including Sapp.

"That's the greatest thing we ever did is turning that team around and winning the championship," he said. "I remember when we used to wear those creamsicle orange uniforms and we couldn't put 100,000 people in a stadium if it was three straight home games. We played Detroit, Seattle and somebody else [Minnesota, in 1996] — three straight home games — and we had like 29, 30 and 30,000 people. We couldn't even put 100,000 people in the stands in three straight home games.

"Then we took a place that couldn't get 30,000 people to a game and put them on a waiting list with 100,000 people for 20 or 30 years. That's beautiful. It's just what it is. And then you see the facility that the Glazers put up for the boys, and it will stand for all time."

Gruden said that Sapp deserves an enormous amount of credit for everything that has been built around the Buccaneers since the mid-90s.

"He was a great player and a great competitor," said Gruden. "He will always be, if not my favorite player, he'll be right at the top of my list. He was one of the great football players of his time. He could play tight end, he could play fullback, he could play any position, in my opinion. He was a natural, he was durable, and he brought it on game day. There was a certain element of just flat-out fun being with Warren Sapp and I miss him. I love that guy. I'm just happy that I had a chance to coach him. He had a lot to do with our Super Bowl, obviously, and a lot of the great things that have happened years. He's been unblockable, unstoppable and unflappable, and I love him."

Surprisingly, however, the Super Bowl ring that now graces Sapp's hardware collection did not factor much into his decision to retire after the 2007 season. He says he could have just as easily walked away from the game without that one big win on his resumeâ€¦if you care to believe him.

"Look, you go into this knowing you're going to do everything you can when you're in the game, and what it is is what it is," said Sapp, who finished his career second on the Bucs' all-time sack list to Hall of Famer Lee Roy Selmon and among the game's all-time leading defensive tackles with 96.5 sacks. "And you think about some of the lists that you're on with a half a dozen or less people and you realize your place in the game is set as far as how it reads. That's what I tell everybody now: The way it reads after 13 years, I love it. I love the way it reads and I don't want to do anything to tarnish how it reads, so I think I'll leave it like it as it is.

"The Super Bowlâ€¦when you talk to people that's the one thing they naturally assume a person is missing when you look at their career. Yes, [winning it] made it easier. Somebody calls you and says, 'You already got a ring, you don't need that ****.' I'm like, 'Thank you.' I missed a couple [goals], but hell, that's what life is about: climbing the mountain and missing sometimes."

Besides, as Mike Alstott said at that party in March and Sapp echoed later, the numbers are of less importance than the names. The friends. The relationships. The bonds. The memories. Those are the things players miss when they leave the game, but they are also the things that last the longest.

"The journey's the best part of it," said Sapp. "That's what I tell everybody that gets anywhere near the NFL. If you have a chance to get a career, get one started, because you can't have one until you get one started. But once you get one started, cherish it because it's an absolute blessing. It's the greatest job in the world. I can't imagine doing anything elseâ€¦but I'm going to find something!"

He made as big of a mark on those that worked with him.

“It’s a special relationship," said Marinelli of his still-strong feelings for perhaps his greatest pupil ever. "The thing that is always important to me about Warren Sapp is his work ethic in the offseason — how much time we put into football in the offseason was so important to him. It was important to him because he wanted to be the best in the game. He wanted to win, which he did; he wanted to win a world championship — he did; went to about seven Pro Bowls — which he did; MVP of the league — which he was; led the league in sacks — which he did; and the thing I think is special with Warren — he redefined the position. I don’t know if you can go back in history of our game of football where you could find an under tackle that put a franchise on his back; carried a franchise on his back each and every week and dominated games."

And did it loudly. How many pictures of Sapp on a football field picture him in full yell, celebrating a big play or rallying his team for another one? His likeness in the "Moment of Victory" statue that graces new One Buccaneer Place is frozen in that pose, as a matter of fact. Sapp's personality was always huge; he had to be a great player in order to keep from being overwhelmed by it.

"He was fun to coach," said Dungy. "It was a challenge because he wanted to know why things were happening. It was a good kind of challenge, the kind that helps coaches and teammates. He wasn't questioning things in a negative way — he wanted to know why it would help us win. Once he was on board with it, he became a great leader in terms of setting a tone for everyone else. When your talented players are also hard-working players, that's what builds you to a championship team.

"One thing about Warren: He was very driven to win. That's the thing I appreciated most about him. He wasn’t a guy who was just going to accept everything at face value. He was going to ask why it was pertinent. I thought that was a good thing. He was a great practice player and he was good for the league in a lot of ways because he was an outgoing personality as well as being a great player."

Sapp played one more season for the Buccaneers in 2003, adding five sacks and two forced fumbles to his Tampa Bay ledger during what would prove to be a disappointing season. Despite a restrictive salary cap situation, the Bucs kept as much of their Super Bowl nucleus as possible intact for another run at the title, but were derailed by injuries, misfortune and a general decline. The painful process of moving on and rebuilding began after the '03 campaign, with the release of Lynch and the free agency departure of Sapp. The Bucs didn't really pursue a new deal, and Sapp appeared headed to Cincinnati before the Raiders swooped in at the end.

Sapp admits that moving on wasn't his first choice, but he doesn't regret the Oakland coda on the end of his career. It was a Raider uniform he hung up when he announced that he was done in March, but when he threw a retirement party later in the year, it was tellingly in Tampa. Sapp hugged everyone in the room at that party, and was just as warmly greeted when he visited a Buccaneer training camp practice in August.

"I would have loved to stay in Tampa the whole time, but that decision wasn't mine to be made," he said. "It's the business of the game. Not many guys play a long career with just one team. I think John Elway, Brooks, Alstott and a few other choice people will have that distinction, and that's something very special, but I have a distinction that I like to say:

"I was the most brash, tenacious piece of **** to play this game and never be traded, cut, released or dismissed from his team. Contract given, contract honored, never missed a game or anything like that. Played every one I could get my hands on. I got kicked out for a half [of one game, with Oakland in 2007], but hey, it was bound to happen one time!"

Before his NFL career even got started, back on the eve of the 1995 draft, Sapp had to fight against being defined by others, by rumors and outside sources. It is a hard-won privilege, then, that he gets to define himself on the way out, as he does above.

Of course, others still have opinions, and many of them include the words "Hall of Fame."

"Absolutely I would say he's a Hall of Famer," said Dungy. "When you combine everything — the talent, the leadership, his locker-room presence, his ability to rise up and play his best in special games — you see that. He had special qualities. I told Warren when we got to Tampa, that if we won a championship he would have to be like Joe Greene was in Pittsburgh. He took on the challenge of getting other guys to play around him. He was very much a part of the Bucs winning a championship."

And he will be missed.

"To me, Warren is clearly belongs in the Hall of Fame because he helped overhaul an entire franchise, and not just because he was such an incredible athlete," said Buccaneers Executive Vice President Edward Glazer. "He brought a new attitude to the team, a swagger, a sense of confidence. He made it clear that the Buccaneers weren't going to be pushed around anymore, and he had the ability to back up what he said. In that way, Warren was the face of the franchise as we turned it around. He helped us take the trip all the way to the penthouse, and what a ride it was!"

Could Sapp, who turned 35 last December, have played another few years in the NFL? Almost certainly. He had a 10-sack season as recently as 2006, and 13 years in the league never robbed him of his incredible athleticism. But he looked back at where he had been and where he might go from here, and decided now was the perfect time to end that journey.

It wasn't even a difficult decision.

"No, it wasn't hard, not really," said Sapp. "After weighing everything that I've done and everything I've been through in this game, the travels and all the fun and the friendships and the relationships I've had over the years, it was pretty easy. It's like going too far to go any further and going too far to go very far back."

If that last bit sounds complicated, it probably is. It is the type of statement born of a million little moments, the game's countless rewards and punishments, the victories and the injuries and the friendships and the rivalries.

When it comes to summing up his entire career, however, Sapp does it in the simplest possible terms.

"In one word: fun," he said. "Absolutely the best time of my life."