SAN DIEGO -- Foolish, stupid, dumb, reckless, naive. It took a string of 10-cent adjectives to describe the $25 million absurdity wrought by the Glazier family on their Tampa Bay Buccaneers one year ago.
First, they fired Tony Dungy, who had taken the Buccaneers from NFL laughingstock to the playoffs in four of his six years as their coach.
Then, they signed Bill Parcells to a contract. Then, Parcells backed out of it. Then, they went hunting for a coach, a pursuit that had the appearance of a Pink Panther sequel. They interviewed Mike Mularkey of the Steelers. Marvin Lewis returned from his interview thinking he had the job. General manager Rich McKay was so frustrated with the process that he received permission to interview in Atlanta and nearly quit.
Somehow, Al Davis passed along the word that his coach with the Oakland Raiders, Jon Gruden, might be available for the right price. Gruden had one year left on his contract, and Oakland Al never has overpaid to keep a coach.
The traveling Glazier sideshow met with Davis and emerged with little but their gold fillings intact, plus a coach. Davis had extracted from them the biggest blockbuster trade for a coach in sports history. The last time Oakland traded a coach to the Bucs, baseball's A's sent Chuck Tanner to Pittsburgh and it only cost the Pirates Manny Sanguillen. This time, the Buccaneers sent the Raiders two first-round picks, two second-rounders and gave Davis an $8 million tip.
What they got in return was Jon Gruden, a coach who in four years with the Raiders had two winning seasons and no Super Bowl visits. The Glaziers had enough left over to give Gruden a $17-million, five-year contract.
"That was the price of poker," McKay said here the other day. "Whatever the price was, it was."
It was a steal, either way. The Raiders got the loot and a ticket to the Super Bowl. The Buccaneers reached their long-promised land. And today, it sets up the juiciest of pairings, Gruden's new team vs. his former one.
"I thought at the time, it was well worth it," Tampa Bay safety John Lynch said. "And I think even more so now, that it was well worth it."
If Gruden leads the Buccaneers to the Super Bowl championship tonight, it will have been. What owner wouldn't package four high draft picks and $8 million to land the Vince Lombardi Trophy? Think they might do it in Cleveland? Philadelphia? Detroit?
Gruden, a k a Chucky, has done the impossible. He coached the once lowly Buccaneers to the Super Bowl. It's like Rutgers playing in the BCS championship game. Not yet 40, he has risen to the top of his profession with a renowned hyperactive style that puts him in the chair behind his desk at 4 a.m. daily. That's when he takes time to go home for a midnight nap.
He's young, he's successful, he scrunches up his face on the sidelines for TV and the fans everywhere love him.
"I think he likes having the attention," Raiders tackle Lincoln Kennedy said. "He likes being a part of the camera."
Marketing in the NFL is a great thing because the man coaching on the other side tonight has done something in his first season that Gruden could not do -- he coached the Raiders into the Super Bowl.
Al Davis waited a frustratingly long time before he named his offensive line coach, Bill Callahan, to replace Gruden and he put himself on the doorstep for a fourth Lombardi trophy while reaping the Glazier's gold.
Gruden, for all his genius, blew the AFC championship game at home two years ago when the second-seeded Raiders lost to the wild-card Ravens. Then, Gruden's Raiders failed again when they blew a fourth-quarter lead and lost to New England in overtime in the playoffs last season.
What team wouldn't accept two first-round picks, two second-rounders and $8 million and the Lombardi Trophy to boot? That's the other side, the Raiders' side, of the deal. They broke the bank with the Glazier's booty and still might go home with the trophy.
"As I recall," Raiders defensive tackle Sam Adams said, "Jon Gruden didn't get the Raiders to the Super Bowl."
Adams wasn't with the Raiders last season and his opinion is not typical of how many of the Raiders feel about their departed coach. But receiver Jerry Porter, in his third year with the Raiders from West Virginia University, agrees with him.
"[Gruden] created an uptight atmosphere around the practice facility and meetings," Porter said. "Coach Callahan is more laid back and lets things happen."
Gruden may not have been back in Oakland beyond this year even without the Glaziers' largesse because Davis is notorious for not overpaying his coaches and Gruden would not have stayed beyond this season without a lucrative deal.
"In this day of free agency, you have to realize it is a business," Raiders halfback Charlie Garner said. "He got offered $17 million to leave. I mean, who in his right mind would stay?"
Gruden and Callahan worked closely together in Oakland and remain friends. Gruden, when he was offensive coordinator in Philadelphia, begged Callahan to join him as line coach. When Gruden went to Oakland, Callahan followed.
"We have enjoyed some great moments together," Gruden said, "some challenging times, and I respect him tremendously as a coach and as a friend. That's who I would want to do battle with in the Super Bowl."
Maybe the Buccaneers would still be playing today had they kept Dungy, but they have gotten here with Gruden as their coach and those are the facts.
"They were always close," said receiver Keenan McCardell, who joined Tampa Bay as a free agent before the season from Jacksonville. "I felt they needed something to get them over the hump, some thing, some person, some event to get them over the hump."
"From the first day [Gruden] walked in, he challenged us to be champions," Lynch said. "And here we are, with the opportunity to call ourselves world champions."
Gruden has given Dungy credit all week, but he took it only to a point when he first met with his new players last year.
"In our first meeting, he walked up and recognized the job that Coach Dungy had done for this team," linebacker Derrick Brooks said. "In the same meeting, about 10 minutes later, he squashed it."
This, according to Brooks, is what Gruden told the Buccaneers in that initial get-together with him: "Coach Dungy did what he had to do and if we want to win a championship, we have to move on as a team."
Or, as defensive lineman Warren Sapp recalled Gruden telling them, "What you did with Tony was great, but we've got to take it a step further."
"We had to move on and take him on as a leader of this team in order to win a championship," Brooks said. "He did all of that in the same meeting and I thought that was key and he earned our respect right there. He recognized what Coach Dungy did, but at the same time he grabbed control of the football team right then and there."
Sapp offered another difference between the styles of Gruden and Dungy in practices.
"With Tony Dungy, we put the pads on. It was blue-collar, it was 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers. With Jon, it's the West Coast offense. It's all about practicing, timing and speed. I could play 20 more years under him. He's like a little battery. You just tap him and off you go. If he had told me to jump off the Walt Whitman Bridge in Philadelphia, I would have had to go check it out."
Gruden has been a focus of attention all week here and he claims to hate it.
"It's the Super Bowl and it's a dream of mine come true. To win it would be an exclamation point on that dream. I'm just going to kind of let the players enjoy this. They are the ones who are going to decide who wins. Hopefully, my situation is a sidebar, page 19, lower right column."
In accounting, they call that the bottom line.
A costly acquisition, Gruden delivers Buccaneers to promised land 
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