McKay a fitting choice for Ring honors

Posted Jun 17, 2010 by Tom McEwen

Updated Jun 17, 2010 at 05:16 PM

Not many developments in sports could have been more predictable than the Tampa Bay Buccaneers voting their “Ole Coach,” John McKay into their Ring of Honor where he joins his first draft pick and greatest player, Lee Roy Selmon.  Selmon was voted in last year and when asked, he said he should not have been elected before McKay. 

If McKay were alive, he would have said that’s wrong, Selmon should have been first.

Well, so the Bucs Ring of Honor is solidly in place with the two best-known personalities as charter members. 

Were McKay alive he would have pooh-poohed his selection probably saying it should be for members only.  Not so. McKay deserved to be the first or second selection, he is where he belongs in a high place in the Ring around Raymond James Stadium. 

McKay was the first coach of the Buccaneers who had a hand in causing it to be built in the first place.

John McKay was not a rare one. He was the only one of his kind in my experience in football, as a coach, as an innovator, as a model for his profession.  Among the things that set McKay apart was his wit under any circumstance, his commentaries, his speeches, and his originality. He said many things worth quoting, perhaps the best after a loss. 

I know this has been said and repeated and repeated, but two of his greatest comments were, after being shut out by Notre Dame when he was coaching at Southern California, he said to those on his squad, “those who need showers, take them.”

After his USC team had beaten his great rival, Paul Bryant at Alabama badly, he declared, “Sam ‘The Bam’ Cunningham (a big fullback) did more to integrate Alabama than a half a dozen Martin Luther Kings would have done.” Alabama began integrating its football team after that loss to USC.

McKay was not one of a kind, he was the only one of a kind. After I had written critically of the Buc’s preparation for a final game, which the Buccaneers won, with the cameras rolling and pens poised, he looked straight down at me (he always conducted his post game interview standing on a platform) and said, “what do you say now (hyphenated expletive).”  Frank Harvey of the then Maas Brothers Department Store had golf shirts made up with the monogram Mr. A. H. on the chest. The readers loved it, so did I and in the end, so did John McKay. No such incident was going to interfere with a friendship, so far as we were concerned.   

John McKay was a winner for the Buccaneers, taking them to the doorstep of the Super Bowl while delighting the media and his fans with his wit and wisdom.

We looked alike. We were both on the same Chamber of Commerce program and when McKay was announced to the crowd, he came in from one side and I from the other.  We were both dressed in white pants, white shoes, a Buccaneer shirt, and Buc orange windbreaker, and with a flop white golf hat, and a cigar in our mouths.  The crowd did not know first who was who. At the Final Four basketball playoff when Florida and UCLA were both on that short program, I had to leave the floor early because the people thought I was Coach John Wooden and was lining up for autographs. And once when I was dressed in that same outfit and in my automobile near One Buccaneer Place , people in cars kept waving to me thinking I was McKay, and I would say in speeches thereafter, I would shoot them a bird and they would know I was John McKay.

McKay reveled in our look-alike circumstance and played upon as often as I did.

When McKay fell ill, I visited him frequently at St. Joseph ’s Hospital and on the afternoon his doctors had told me he was not going to make it through the night, I stayed late and when I left, I kissed the ole Coach on the forehead. He blinked and went back to sleep, and I saw him no more except as his small private funeral which Monsignor Lawrence Higgins officiated and some in his family and I said a few words. 

Mine were, “so long, ole Coach, see you on the other side.”