Bucs High on Schottenheimer, Childress

TAMPA — How do you get a head coaching job in Tampa? Well either be a member of AARP or hang up on the team’s newspaper before you’re even hired.

That will be the joke if the Buccaneers hire one of the two guys they are reportedly very high on in their coaching search. Marty Schottenheimer, a proven regular season winner with notable postseason mediocracy, is very interested in taking the job according to sources.

“I think they’ve got some great young players on that team,” Shottenheimer said. “In my particular case, I like to work with kids. I refer to them as kids, even though I know they’re grown men. But I like to give them the benefit of my insight as to what I’ve seen and experienced in this business. I’m a teacher is what I am in my view.”

Schottenheimer would be the polar opposite of Raheem Morris, who almost had a young guy frat house mentality in Tampa that only went so far.

The other candidate on a short list the Bucs have is former Vikings head coach Brad Childress. He’s not known for much outside his absolute failure in Minnesota despite taking the team a game away from the Super Bowl in 2009. Much of that season is attributed to Brett Favre leading the team and is a stark comparison to the 2010 failure of the team that saw Childress get dismissed halfway through the season.

Childress is also known for being able to snag great players in the draft, but his real forte is giving the cold shoulder to the press. In Minnesota he came into the job chaffed and left even more so the way he was treated near the end of his tenure. The fact of the matter is he can’t handle criticism and that was displayed when he hung up on the Tampa Bay Times Roy Cummings.

That’s not necessarily the best way to get off on the right foot with the local media, but then again Childress honestly couldn’t care less

what the media feels like. Love him or hate him, he’s not afraid to hurt your feelings.

The media’s or his players.

The Bucs aren’t done interviewing however. They still have Texans defensive coordinator and former Dallas Cowboys coach Wade Phillips to interview. Phillips has expressed interest in returning to Houston next year to head a defense he helped make ferocious, but also made it even more clear he wants to be an NFL head coach again and if that’s available in Tampa he will spring at the opportunity.

The only thing that stands in the way of that is Bob McNair’s pocketbook and how deep he wants do go.

The search is far from over and we’ve been fed crumbs of news nuggets about where Tampa is going. Stephen Holder, Buccaneers beat writer, has narrowed the list to Schottenheimer, Phillips, Childress and Mike Sherman.

Right now Schottenheimer is the favorite to get the head coaching job and if he fails in his tenure with the Bucs, it’ll be the first time he’s ever failed.

But for now the Bucs coaching staff sits vacant and the team and city are still dangling in the wind without a captain for their ship.