Selmon was special on and off the field

It's tempting to wonder how good Lee Roy Selmon could have been. What if he had been drafted by any team other than the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers — the franchise's first-ever pick in 1976 — or what if he had played more than nine NFL seasons?

Handicapped by a bad back and often forced to play out of position, the 6-3, 256-pound defensive end was nonetheless one of the best there ever was. He played the run well. He found the quarterback an unofficial 78 1/2 times in 121 games (sacks weren't an official NFL stat for his first six seasons). He made everyone around him better. He did everything great players do.

Sadly, much like his football career, Selmon's life ended much too soon; he died on Sept. 4, two days after suffering a stroke. He was 56.

The football minds who studied him spoke of a rare athlete. The teammates and non-football guys who knew him spoke of a genuinely decent human being. "Probably the greatest man I ever met," says Andrew Martinez, the managing partner of Lee Roy Selmon's Restaurant in South Tampa — one of the popular chain's seven Florida locations.

In many ways, because Selmon was a Buccaneer he was special — a pillar of pride amid the rubble fans still recognize as the worst football team ever to take the field. Selmon stood out during the team's 0-26 start and during its march to the NFC  championship game in 1979, when he was named the league's most valuable defensive player.

In college, Selmon and older brother Dewey (one of Tampa Bay's two second-round picks in 1976) helped Oklahoma claim a national title by holding Michigan to just six points and 202 yards of offense in the 1976 Orange Bowl. Coach Barry Switzer later called him "the greatest defensive lineman ever to play at Oklahoma."

But when his football career ended, Selmon was every bit as special, every bit as great. He became a successful businessman, and in 2001, accepted the job as the University of South Florida's athletic director. He was instrumental in helping the Bulls' football program gain entrance into the Big East in only its ninth year of existence.

Walk into one of his restaurants, and the motto on the wall appropriately matches the way he carried himself as a Buccaneer: "Play Hard. Eat Well. And Don't Forget to Share." When he was honored by the league, by the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1995, and by the Buccaneers, who made him the first player inducted into their ring of honor, Selmon always said "thank you" instead of "you're welcome."

How much greater could Lee Roy Selmon have been had life dealt him a different hand? I suspect not one bit; what he gave to Tampa Bay for nine seasons was no more or no less than what he would have given to any other team. If you believe all of what people have to say about Selmon, the man gave 100 percent of himself 100 percent of the time.

After he was drafted by the expansion Buccaneers, Selmon told reporters: "I realize it'll be rough for a while — the losing and all that with a new team. But it's like life. You have to make something good happen even when things look bad … You have to make the best of it."

 

Mike Beacom is a pro and college football writer whose work has appeared in numerous print and online sources. He is also the author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Football (Alpha, 2010). Follow him on twitter @mbeac

Source: http://www.profootballweekly.com/2011/09/09/selmon-was-special-on-and-off-the-field

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