Hubert Mizell
Pete Rozelle erred. The National Football League commissioner swears, “on any given Sunday" any team can upset any other. Worst surprising best. But not on Dec. 5, 1976.

On this given Sunday, Tampa Bay didn't have the chance of a snowball in Ecuador. It was the NFL's No. i team against No. 28. It looked it. Come to Tampa Stadium next Sunday. See the last of the world's worst pro football team. In 1999, you can tell your infant kin that you were there to witness the only time an NFL team ever lost a 14th game in one year.

The lucky team next weekend is the New England Patriots. They don't have to practice. Needn't look at one Bucs film. No bother getting fired up. The Pats aren't the Steelers, but they don't need to.

Pittsburgh was kind. The Steelers won 42-0 but could have made it 75-0 if they had really wanted to be nasty. Tampa Bay wasn't great when the inaugural season began, but the Bucs have been so beaten up that expect any time to see MASH helicopters plunging into the stadium to evacuate their wounded.

"The Steelers actually ran the clock out inside our 30-yard line at the end of the first half." said veteran Bucs offensive tackle Mike Current. "That showed me a lot of class."

Class or pity? It may have appeared, when "backup" Pittsburgh quarterback Terry Bradshaw went into a passing flurry in the third quarter that the men of steel were rubbing Bucco noses in the Tartan turf. That wasn't the case. "You can't put a Bradshaw into the game and tell him not to do what he's been trained for years to do," Current sad.

Buccaneers Coach John McKay concurred with one of his humorous twists. "Terry (Bradshaw) hadn't played in a long time and they needed to see if he was ready to throw the football," he said. "After all, they are getting ready for the play-offs. And, after all, ha their No. 2 quarterback."

Bradshaw, Of course, has long been Pittsburgh's main man, but rookie Mike Kruczek has been filling in during most of the Steelers' eight-game winning streak. Bradshaw was crippled first with a neck injury when dropped on his head by Cleveland lineman Joe Jones and later sprained his right wrist. He looked well Sunday.

IT WAS ALSO A DAY for a homecoming for Bradshaw's longtime backup quarterback with the Steelers, Terry Hanratty. He started for Tampa Bay but was immediately — and constantly lost out there amid a crowd of black jerseys, Hanratty was I-for-4 passing for minus-one yard. "He had no chance," McKay said, "but I didn't feel he had a helluva chance coming in. Put their quarterbacks behind our line and they would be hurting tonight, too."

A Pittsburgh reporter shoved a microphone in McKay's face and asked if the 42-0 loss embarrassed him. "I was embarrassed before I got here."

McKay, who has attempted to avoid crying about injuries, now has ample reason. Dave Pear, who has perhaps been the Bucs' MVP as defensive nose guard, was carted off Sunday with a strained knee. Before that, the Bucs had lost 17 players for the season for various medical reasons.

"WE'VE GOT MORE good players in Tampa today than we do hero (in Pittsburgh)," McKay said. "Let Pittsburgh try to handle Lee Roy Selmon of our defensive line and it gets tougher. We'll be back."

McKay's book probably carries larger "score to settle" checkmarks than Chuck Wepner's. But Tampa Bay's coach probably has a better long-range chance to get even than does the well-plastered boxer.

"John's probably plotting over on the other side," Steeler Coach Chuck Noll said in the winners' locker room beneath Three Rivers Stadium. "He'll get back at everybody one day."

My guess is that half the current Tampa Bay roster will be missing by the time the 1977 Bucs open their regular season. If about a dozen — and the right dozen — of those injured 17 or 18 athletes come back healthy, and if Tampa Bay gets Ricky Bell and a couple of other rookies who are ready to help. This will be an enormously improved NFL team in its second season.

I was thinking, sitting in the Three Rivers press box a couple of hours after the massacre ended, that I have a friend in Jacksonville who has become a devout fan of the NFL team to the north (Atlanta) and the new one to the south (Tampa Bay). His boys lost 101-0 this week.

HANRATTY SAID HE WAS "disappointed we couldn't move the ball better. Almost nothing went right."

Before Tampa Bay could get started, punter Dave Green botched a perfect center snap to give Pittsburgh an easy touchdown chance at the Bucs' 7. It was soon 7-0, which put the Bucs out of reach of a team that has allowed 3.5 points for its last eight games.

For teams like the Bucs and Falcons, who lost 59-0 to Los Angeles, there should be an equivalent to softball's 10-run rule. Some sort of a TKG. Why not allow a coach to throw a white towel on the field and end the agony?

McKay said that several young Bucs who "will be around when we get to be a better football team" have learned many lessons during what is now an 0-13 season with a near-cinch to blossom to 0-14. Among those is 6-foot-8, 260-pound offensive tackle Steve Young from Colorado. Young agreed, "I have learned a great deal," but added, "I just don't want to much more about how to lose."

McKay, talking about his depleted squad, said that "Jimmy Sims made four or five tackles and he only showed up in camp Thursday. (Defensive end Ed) McAleney was in a Buccaneer uniform for a second time, one day of practice and today. When you're in that position, your chances aren't too good."

Another Pittsburgh newsman asked McKay if he had become sorry he left the winning life of coaching at the University of Southern California. "NOPE," SAID THE Bucs' coach. "I thought this was what might happen, but I still had the guts to do it."

Hanratty, despite what McKay said about it not being a fair chance Sunday, probably has the odds stacked against him With the Buccaneers. He is not better than Steve Spurrier, first of all, and it's no secret Tampa Bay is looking for a quarterback other than Spurrier to lead them out of the expansion wilderness.

Hanratty did, in a weird way, pull one of Sunday's great plays. Not with his passing arm, but with his foot. He threw a pass that was easily intercepted by the Steelers' Mel Blount in the first half. Blount raced toward the Bucs' end zone, but was hit and fumbled. The ball bounced into the end zone, several Steelers pursued for a recovery that would have been a Pittsburgh touchdown. Hanratty came among them and, with a Pele-like sidewindlng kick, toed the football safely out the rear end of the end zone for a harmless touchback. On this Sunday, that was a biggie.