Selmon: 'Great Player, Better Man'

A day after former Tampa Bay Buccaneers superstar, NFL Hall of Famer and USF athletic administrator Lee Roy Selmon passed, succumbing to a stroke he suffered Friday afternoon, Roxanne McSheehy rose a glass to toast a true icon of the Tampa Bay area at the St. Petersburg restaurant that bears his name.

"He was a great football player, a great man and he was not just a football player," McSheehy said. "He was a pillar of the community. He put the Bucs on the map."

Lee Roy Selmon, known as "The Original Buccaneer," was much more than a football player, a suit at a university or an entrepreneur who had his name adorn several area chain eateries.

Selmon was an iconic figure not so much for what he did on the football field, but what he represented as a man, say those who knew him.

Selmon, a true superstar in college at the University of Oklahoma, was the very first draft choice of the Bucs in 1976. Three years later, Selmon was named NFC Defensive Player of the Year and led the Bucs to within a whisker of the Super Bowl three years later, sort of an NFL fairy tale, worst to first.

To this day the Bucs are thought of as a team with a tradition of defense, a tradition that began with the gentle giant, Selmon.

Teammates often spoke of how, in the brutal hand-to-hand combat of the NFL, the soft-spoken Selmon would never swear. Off the field to his final day, Selmon personified grace and was uncomfortable talking about himself, preferring to help and get to know others.

"As great of a player he was, he was an even better man," former Bucs general manager Ron Wolf, who drafted Selmon, said in an NFL Network documentary of the NFL's best players.

It was a common refrain heard all weekend of Selmon.

As great of a player Selmon was, it was near impossible to be a better man, but those who knew him and met him were adamant he surpassed his athletic standard.

Selmon was constantly double-teamed if not triple-teamed on the football field and it did not matter. Selmon was simply unstoppable.

He didn't just tackle quarterbacks and running backs, he appeared to swallow ball carriers whole; quarterbacks cowered beneath him as if the sky itself fell upon them.

To his final days, Selmon often hung out at One Buc Place and counseled players, many of whom were young enough to be his sons. Even later generations of Bucs great defenders, such as Warren Sapp and Simeon Rice, always humbly deferred to Selmon as the torch bearer of Bucs defensive players.

Current Bucs defensive tackle Gerald McCoy, like Selmon, a first-round pick of the Bucs and a graduate of and a native of Oklahoma, recounted to the Tampa Tribune that Selmon's advice to him was not how he played on the field but how he treated others off the field. That was most important Selmon.

How good was Selmon? The majority of seasons he played with the Bucs, the team was awful, historically horrid. Yet Selmon dominated.

"It's so hard for players on bad teams to make the Hall of Fame," longtime NFL writer Peter King of Sports Illustrated wrote on Twitter. "Lee Roy Selmon was a cinch. That's how great he was."

Selmon was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1995. His jersey No. 63, known throughout professional football, is the only number retired by the Buccaneers franchise.

Selmon's defensive line coach with the Bucs, Abe Gibron, told the St. Petersburg Times in 1979 that if Selmon had a mean streak, the NFL would "have to bar him" he was so good.

Last year Selmon was named as a member of the Top 100 NFL players of all time by a panel of experts for a series that was broadcast on the NFL Network.

Former Bucs star defensive tackle Sapp, the vocal leader of the Bucs Super Bowl-winning team of 2002 and now an analyst on the NFL Network, said of Selmon on Twitter, "The Greatest Buccaneer To EVER Wear The Uniform & A BETTER MAN. "

Rice, who perhaps was the second-best Bucs defensive end (second to  Selmon) seemed emotional writing about Selmon, "Wow how do I put into words for a Man a Legend a champion who was a dynamic force and someone I had to the privilege to live in his shadows and only hope to reach the highest as a man as you did Mr. Lee Roy Selmon #63 you will be missed God Bless and Long live the King."

After his football days, Selmon became an athletic administrator at the University of South Florida (USF) and later athletic director. He was responsible for starting the school's football program and hiring its first coach, St. Petersburg native Jim Leavitt.

It was while attending USF that current NFL writer Jenna Laine, a St. Petersburg resident, first met Selmon. The two developed a professional relationship after she graduated as she interviewed the former Bucs great several times. Laine was shaken to learn of his passing.

"Lee Roy, you met him and left feeling, 'I just met the most amazing person in the world,' " Laine said. "He wasn't comfortable talking about himself or taking compliments. He was more interested in what you were doing.

"Lee Roy, you would have to ask and ask to get answers out of him. He was reserved."

Honoring Lee Roy Selmon

• Today there is a visitation from 5-8 p.m. at Exciting Central Baptist Church, 2923 North Tampa St., Tampa.
• Selmon's funeral is at 10 a.m. Friday at Idlewild Baptist Church, 18371 N. Dale Mabry Highway in Lutz. His funeral will be held this weekend in Oklahoma City, where he will be buried. ABC will be streaming the Tamoa funeral service live.
• As a result of the services Friday, Lee Roy Selmons restaurants will not open until 4 p.m. Friday.
• The family is asking that people make donations in Selmon's honor to the Abe Brown Ministries or to the Selmon Fund at the University of South Florida Foundation Partnership for Athletics.