Tiger Woods Visits Bucs Camp

Tiger Woods

visited the Bucs Monday at the team hotel in Celebration, Orlando.  I’ll let the players do the talking.

DEFENSIVE BACKS COACH RAHEEM MORRIS
“As NFL guys, we don’t get star-struck much, but when you get a Tiger Woods come in who is the best at what he does, it’s unbelievable. If you can pick his brain a little bit, which I know Ronde did and some of the linebackers did, it was awesome. He was giving some messages last night. The one thing that caught everybody’s attention was about never having a mental breakdown. You can have a physical breakdown, but he’ll never have a mental breakdown. That caught everybody’s attention. He says he has a certain amount of hours to prepare and that if he has a mental breakdown, it’s his fault because he wasn’t prepared. Physical breakdowns happen. Everybody’s human. But mental breakdowns should never happen if you study. That’s why Ronde Barber and Derrick Brooks and those guys are great players.”

SAFETY SABBY PISCITELLI
“I was walking around talking about it this morning – ‘You don’t understand, Tiger Woods was in our meeting room last night!’ It was amazing. There are only a couple of athletes in my generation that I would like to meet, but he’s one of them. He is one of the most dominant athletes of my era and probably ever. It was surreal. It was crazy. You look at him and you are just wowed. It was a tremendous honor to meet Tiger Woods.”

RUNNING BACKS COACH AND SPECIAL TEAMS COORDINATOR RICH BISACCIA
“For me, the two global names in my lifetime certainly are Muhammad Ali and Tiger Woods. For him to walk in the running back room and see all of running backs scramble to get their camera phones and take pictures with him. For guys Warrick Dunn, Earnest Graham, Michael Bennett and B.J. Askew – those type of people – to want to get their picture taken with him was really something. I don’t watch golf much. I don’t know a lot about it. But I do watch the Golf Channel late at night after he does his rounds and the questions they ask him – I told him that his articulation about every hole and the practice work he put in on every round, it almost brings it to life to hear him talk about it when I didn’t see him play. He came back at me and said that it was just like coaching and remembering plays. He was just exciting to be around. He really fit right in with us. It was certainly a pleasure and an honor to meet a guy like that. Tiger Woods is Tiger Woods – you know what I mean?”

RUNNING BACK MICHEAL BENNETT
“I don’t know how it feels to meet God, but to be able to meet Tiger Woods … I just gave him a hug. Man, this is Tiger Woods! I just met the greatest athlete of all-time. For him to come out and go around to our meeting rooms and give us a message – and he’s got a bum knee – it just shows you what type of person he is. To come out and give us some words of encouragement … most guys don’t get to meet. The only time you see this guy is on TV because you can’t get within 80 feet of him out in public because of all the people screaming his name. To get a picture with him and to have a conversation with him, stuff like that makes this the training camp of all training camps. It’s still on my mind. I woke up this morning thinking, ‘I met Tiger Woods!’ It was a great feeling and one of the things I will always cherish. He’s in a world of his own. It took me by surprise. Coach Gruden said, ‘I’ve got a guy I want to bring in to speak to you’ and I was thinking, ‘Okay, who the hell is this guy?’ Then Tiger Woods walked in and I was like, ‘Holy [crap]!'”