REMEMBER WHEN? It's easily forgotten now, in the heady highs that Super Bowl hopes bring. Fall Sundays are supposed to be fun Sundays now. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have new stars, new expectations and a new stadium. Who cares to remember now that Raymond James Stadium almost didn't happen? In January 1995, Palm Beach financier Malcolm Glazer bought the team for $192-million, the highest price ever paid at the time for a professional sports franchise -- for a team with one of the worst records in professional sports. Glazer immediately saw a problem -- Houlihan's Stadium. To end the years of football futility, to make their investment worthwhile, the Glazers said they needed the extra revenue new stadiums provide. After initially promising to cover “about half” the cost of a new stadium, Glazer and his sons, who had been put in charge of the Bucs, launched a seat deposit drive. The idea was to have Bucs fans pay a fee for the right to buy tickets. Glazer hoped to sell 50,000 seat deposits, but when just under 33,000 seat deposits were sold, Glazer's sons said they were “devastated.” Government officials worried that the Glazers would try to soothe themselves by going to another NFL-hungry city. “They were obviously talking to other communities,” recalls County Administrator Dan Kleman. “They were looking for a financial package that would make financial sense for them.” Negotiations brightened in March when Glazer signed a deal to build a $168-million stadium. The deal was contingent on local government approval and the passage of a rental car tax. The state Legislature killed that deal by rejecting the rental car tax, arguing that the county should raise its own taxes if it wanted to build a football stadium. For Henry Saavedra, then finance director of the Tampa Sports Authority, it was the darkest moment. “I figured there was no way they would stay,” said Saavedra, now the TSA's executive director. The Glazers were insisting on a stadium, but two questions remained: Exactly how should the stadium be paid for? And how could the public be convinced the price was worth it?