Sports in the Tampa Bay area
Five years later, the Miami Dolphins and the Minnesota Vikings faced off in a joint AFL-NFL preseason game prior to the 1969 season, the final one before the two leagues would merge.
The franchise's fortunes began a turnaround in the mid-90s under coach Tony Dungy, and the success continued after the team moved into newly built Raymond James Stadium in 1998.
The upward trend culminated in the Bucs' first championship at the end of the 2002 season under coach Jon Gruden, when they defeated the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl XXXVII.
Many teams, including the Oakland A's, Texas Rangers, Seattle Mariners, Chicago White Sox, Minnesota Twins, and San Francisco Giants, considered moving to the vacant venue.
[15] St. Petersburg mayor Al Lang made a similar push, and in 1914, the St. Louis Browns became the first of many teams to train in St. Pete, being succeeded by the Philadelphia Phillies for 1915.
The Spartans moved up to play NCAA Division I football and produced several NFL stars, before dropping the sport entirely after the 1974 season due to budgetary concerns.
Red Barrett, Jim Corsi, Sankar Montoute, Bob Tewksbury and J. P. Ricciardi are all notable alumni of Saint Leo athletics.
In 2006, for the first time in the 24-year history of the Eckerd College Women's Volleyball program, the Tritons qualified for the NCAA South Region tournament.
The Tampa Bay Rowdies are a member of the USL Championship (USLC), competing in the second tier of the United States soccer pyramid.
The franchise considers itself to be a phoenix club of the original Tampa Bay Rowdies of the first NASL and displays a star on its shield commemorating the 1975 championship.
Though the owners intended to use the Rowdies name from the beginning, trademark issues forced the team to call itself FC Tampa Bay when it took the pitch as an expansion franchise of the USSF Division 2 Professional League in 2010.
The Rowdies won the inaugural Soccer Bowl in 1975, bringing Tampa Bay its first professional sports championship, and were successful for most of their existence.
While a licensing dispute forced the franchise to call itself "FC Tampa Bay" for its initial two seasons, the new club used the old club's green and gold color scheme and include a star for the Rowdies' 1975 championship in their team shield[21] The team officially began using the "Rowdies" name for the 2012 season and promptly brought home the Soccer Bowl trophy that October.
With innovative head coach Steve Spurrier and a fan-friendly atmosphere, "Banditball"'s local popularity rivaled that of the more-established Buccaneers, who were in the midst of a streak of 14 straight losing seasons during the Bandits' short existence.
John Bassett, the principal owner of the Bandits, had opposed the USFL's fall strategy and planned to make the team a charter member of a new spring league.
Unable to find local buyers and hampered by an unfavorable lease agreement for Raymond James Stadium, the league folded the franchise in 2001.
The Storm had one of the longest associations with their market of any AFL team and enjoyed strong local support, leading the league in attendance many times.
In December 2017, the Storm's ownership group announced that due to greatly reduced league revenues, the franchise would cease operations.
"[29] Other notable sporting events in the area include: Raymond James Stadium is home to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the South Florida Bulls football team.
It has also hosted the Tampa Bay Lightning, college football bowl games, WWE ThunderDome, and the 1999 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Final Four.
[36] Immediately upon buying the Buccaneers in 1995, new owner Malcolm Glazer declared Tampa Stadium inadequate and demanded that a new facility be built at public expense or he would move the team.
Al López Field was a spring training and minor league ballpark in Tampa situated at the current location of Raymond James Stadium.
It was built in 1954 and named after Al López, the Ybor City native who went on become Tampa's first MLB player and, eventually, a Hall of Fame manager.
During one of the earliest ballgames in April 1919, Babe Ruth reportedly hit his longest home run – a 587-foot blast that is memorialized with a historical marker at the approximate spot where it landed at the current site of the University of Tampa's school of business.
It served as the home for the University of Tampa's football team from 1936 to 1967 and was named after I. W. Phillips, a local businessman who donated the land to the school so that the Spartans would not have to share Plant Field.
Phillips Field was also the site of several well-attended NFL preseason contests in the mid-1960s that helped Tampa earn an eventual expansion franchise.
Phillips Field could also be configured for baseball, and the Tampa Smokers of the Class C Florida International League played most of their home games there from 1946 to 1954.
Curtis Hixon Hall was made obsolete by the construction of newer and larger facilities such as the Ice Palace (now the Amalie Arena), the Sun Dome, and the Tampa Convention Center.
Though a little larger than Tampa's Curtis Hixon Hall, it was built in the same year (1965) and hosted a similar mix of concerts, sports, and special events.
Several nationally televised wrestling and boxing events were held there, along with annual Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus TV specials.
