Tampa, Florida					Thursday, September 09, 2010

Jim Steeg Wins the Gold
Saturday, August 21, 2004
TAMPA—The National Football League, football in general, the Super Bowl, Tampa Bay, the Buccaneers, Florida, you and I took a big hit this weekend. Jim Steeg resigned effective after the upcoming Super Bowl in Jacksonville. Steeg is the vice president of the NFL for special events—and that includes the Super Bowl. Yes, he’s been the mastermind behind this event for as long as you can remember, and thus its acclaimed innovator and originator of so much that has made this great sports event what it is. For us, he was a special friend, official and personal. He was important in the move that brought the NFL franchise that is the Bucs to Tampa. He was important in the successful pursuits, then staging, for the staging of the three Super Bowls in Tampa, 1984 and 1991 at the Gulf War’s peak, both at old Tampa Stadium, then 2001 at Raymond James. He loves and appreciates this great place in which we live, owns a condominium at Tom Dempsey’s Saddlebrook Resort, is a spring regular for he loves baseball and particularly the New York Yankees. And it was at these Super Bowls in Tampa when so much that is now so important and to this grand championship celebration were tested and proven here—the Host Committee, the mid-week media party, the enlarged on-site Corporate Village, like the heaviest every minority involvement in production and staging, like the in-house JumboTron, the some new charity involvements and the great NFL Experience, where fans test their abilities at NFL challenges. “I love Tampa,’’ Steeg told me at the 1996 Super Bowl at Tempe, Ariz. “You see Tampa in so much now, the standard fare was begun there, and so many key positions and individuals have become expert at this production, like, well, our first Host Committee with 12,000 volunteers was there. And went with us to do the work at other sides,’’ like Bob Best for the pre-game shows, for Larry Hodge (then of GTE) communication, like Rick Nafe, troubleshooter, like tireless and knowledgeable people like Leonard Levy, Barbara Casey, the late wonderful Shirley Ryals.’’ But, that’s about to end, that great career of this special man, Jim Steeg, who is peerless at what he does, as well as precise and patient and a puzzlement only in that he wears saddleshoes. I visited with him by phone the day he made the announcement national. He also is a great private friend of my family, and always will be. And surely will be spending more time in Tampa. “It had been in the works,’’ Steeg said. “I am an early Fifty man and it is time for another experience and career. Yes, I had had a couple of calls and feelers already. And yes, Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and I talked this all over and have been talking it over. The NFL office is now a different breed and with a number of new people in key positions, though Joe Browne remains as Tagliabue’s key assistant and the No. 2 man. He’s a star and he and Steeg have been side by side through the growth of the NFL and Super Bowls. But old friends and longtime colleagues have gone, into retirement or the next life. Great friends Don Weiss, an architect of Super Bowls who wrote a book about them, died two years ago and great friend and TV VP vice president Val Pinchbeck, who had moved to the Tampa area, died this year. Jim Heffernan, a neighbor of Pinchbeck and former director of public relations, lives now among us here and is at all of the Buc games as a counsel to PR man Jeff Kamis. “It was time,’’ said Steeg by phone. “Everything is and was fine. Just time to move on,’’ with matchless credentials and so many top people as friends in top places, in business, in the corporate world, in the	media, and in high places in so many arenas. Just look at the NFL franchise owners. And remember, the NFL headquarters is in New York City. And Steeg went to the NFL from the Miami Dolphins, and has staged Super bowls in Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Detroit, New Orleans, San Diego, San Francisco, Atlanta, Houston, Tempe with Jacksonville ahead. Bet here, too, that all these good feelings among the NFL’s Jim Steeg felt in the Tampa Bay area’s media and Super Bowl committee people is matched at all of the other venues where he has worked and staged this magnificent sports spectacle all so want to host. Efficiency and success and attitude will do that. And don’t forget, everybody wants Super Bowl tickets. I rode with him in his rented Buick prior to the Atlanta game. On the trip, his phone was busy all the time. He had calls from a half dozen owners, from Sen. Ted Kennedy, Vice President Al Gore and Jesse Jackson that day, then one from a young man who had a girl friend but only one ticket. Could he please see the first half and let the wife-to-be take his place for the second. No, there are no return tickets. But, Steeg was more interested in knowing how the young man got his cell number. No, not angry, just curious. He was what way. Just as he was a baseball nut, (and minor league team owner), loved to play pickup basketball at Super Bowls, and golf anywhere, even with the infectiously bad Leonard Levy of our town. Yes, Levy and Linda and I were among the few and the chosen invited to his surprise 25th year celebration party at Houston last Super Bowl, and helped stage a birthday party for him in 1991 here at Hooters. He loved Tampa to stage a Super Bowl, in part because of friend here, the fact that it is what we call a 20-minute city, 20 minutes to anywhere, and because it is neither too big nor too small. Indeed, that 1984 Bowl here opened up the market for that great event to mid-sized American cities. Also, that 1991 game came off without a hitch despite the Gulf War, the searches at the gate, the tension with Black Hawks and security everywhere, why, even producing with the Whitney Houston rendition, the best ever pre-game National Anthem, so good with the Tampa Symphony accompaniment, it was sold on disc in great numbers and was one heckuva a game the New York Giants won 20-19 when a last second field goal attempt by Buffalo was wide right. None of us ever saw Bills’ kicker Scott Norwood again. Pretty good script you arranged there, Steeg, from Whitney’s hit to Norwood’s miss. And, no, Steeg had nothing to do with the halftime events of this last Super Bowl , the bare-chested bit. So, our friend, the best thing that ever happened to Super Bowls, and big time special events, is losing its genius. How can he be thanked? Find good reason for Steeg to make Tampa his full-time home and hey, the Buccaneers could make it special, too, and we all know how they can do that, with a return engagement in January to Jacksonville, but, uh, with a somewhat improved team from the one that played there Friday, the day Jim Steeg said he was hanging it up. Thanks Jim Steeg, for all you did for us all, again, the NFL, football, Super Bowls, us individually and collectively as Tampa Bay. I don’t suppose the NFL can now cancel the Super Bowls after this next one, because of the standards he has set. But, while Steeg has surely made the transition easy—everything is in place—just as surely the successor has to be concerned, at first anyway, about keeping this game up to the Steeg Standard. Jim Steeg will be easy to follow, while at the same time impossible to follow. What Steeg has been is simply the best at what he does. He’s won the Gold. ##
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