If youth is to be served in the National Football League, it may as well be served at One Buc Place and Raymond James Stadium.

The Buckos can claim the Youth Capital now after the Malcolm Glazer Family (which just banked some big, big bucks with the sale of a Manchester United soccer star) declared Mark Dominik, 38 and who looks younger, general manager.

The just-appointed head football coach, Raheem Morris, is 32, pushing 33 and middle age. Defensive back and leader Ronde Barber is 34. Place kicker Matt Bryant and punter Josh Bidwell are 33. The new, big guy who may emerge as the Bucs starting quarterback for a while anyway is Byron Leftwich and he is 29. Leftwich also is 6-foot-5 and 250.

Two older, all-time Bucs who Dominik released quickly are linebacker Derrick Brooks and scatterbug Warrick Dunn. For Dominik, those were the toughest moves yet forced in the campaign to serve youth.

“We have committed to the future and this is all part of it,” said the new head personnel man who succeeded Bruce Allen, let go with Coach Jon Gruden. “We are definitely committed to that, to making this team young again.” Look at the roster. It is young, made up of now of 85 players. The Buckos will take 80 to camp in Tampa, not Orlando, a change, a change the new GM so wanted.

“Orlando did fine. Great facilities, but we have the best facilities in the NFL. I think working in Tampa will help the team. I know it will help me,” said the young husband of Amy and 2-year-old Davis’s dad. “The reaction has been good all around.”

We know the media will like it. Less cost to cover the preseason, less wear on our regular newsfolk, like Roy Cummings and Anwar Richardson. No more of the split camp business, is the hope here.

“We talk youth movement, but it is not to suggest we do not want to win out of the gate. We do.”
Dominik has moved around. He has had fine teachers, some well known to Tampans. The new GM was born in St. Cloud, a cold, cold, place north of Minneapolis-St. Paul but south of International Falls, which quoted regularly during the winter as having the lowest temperature in the country.

His dad was an electronics salesman who moved plenty: to North Carolina, to Tennessee, to Kansas where the younger Dominik graduated with a sports management degree — before it was the rage — then found work with the Kansas City Chiefs, got to know owner Lamar Hunt, took an internship, the sports management end of things and was on his career route.

Hunt, a wonderful man and longtime supporter of Tampa in pro football, Super Bowl, and soccer pursuits, was good, a fine one to know. Dom, as he is called, stayed with the Chiefs. He had met, and got to know, Jerry Angelo, just a dandy, loyal man who coached at Tampa and the Bucs for a time, and well. Angelo suggested the Bucs.

Dominik was hired as a young, learning scout in 1995. He worked for Coach Sam Wyche, then Tony Dungy. Dominik was elevated to director of Buccaneer pro personnel. He was arriving. He was in a position to be noticed by the Glazers — he was on the staff for the Bucs’ only Super Bowl in 2002. This academic young man was good enough to impress the Glazers enough to cause them to name him general manager in January, joining Morris in this pursuit of all that there is in pro football: the Super Bowl— hey, if not this year, well, maybe next.

But, those of us in Florida long ago tired of the wait-till-next-year cry.

And, with the Gators out of that mode so long of their woeful wish, no one around here wants to pick it up again for anybody. Anybody.

Not even a couple of young promising dudes like Raheem and Dominik.