Whenever the NFL Draft rolls around, it's both a reason to be hopeful for the future and also mindful of past mistakes. Draft busts aren't as common as they were in decades past, which is a testament to either how much better front offices have gotten at finding talent or a sign that the media has calmed down.
It's truly hard to pick which of those unlikely scenarios it is.
Maybe the negative connotation we've had about draft busts has cooled over the years, but that just makes the sins of the past even harder to bear. For the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, they own not a tremendous draft blunder but one of the most embarrassing moments in NFL Draft history.
Bo Jackson named the Buccaneers biggest NFL Draft bust ever
MMQB recently took a rather dark trip down memory lane and revisited each NFL team's biggest draft bust. Tampa Bay has had more than a few notable busts, but it's pretty hard to top the one Matt Verderame picked.
Things got pretty bleak for the Bucs in the late-80s into the early-90s, but rock bottom might have been when Bo Jackson told the team not to draft him No. 1 overall because he'd never play for them, but they did it anyway.
It turns out Bo was a man of his word.
"Jackson was a tremendous running back at Auburn, winning the Heisman Trophy. However, despite making clear he’d never play for the Buccaneers, owner Hugh Culverhouse selected Jackson with the No. 1 pick. The superstar made good on his threat, choosing to play baseball with the Kansas City Royals instead. The following year, the Raiders selected Jackson, where he played four seasons," Verderame wrote.
To be clear, Bo Jackson was not a bust. He's one of the greatest players of the last 50 years in not one but two different sports. The Bucs picking Bo Jackson even after he flat out told him not to remains one of the single dumbest thing a franchise has ever done, and that's why this decision continues to age so poorly.
It's the epitmoe of the 'What are you going to do, stab me?' meme but instead as a football decision that set a team back.
Why didn't Bo Jackson want to play for the Buccaneers?
After his Heisman Trophy-winning season at Aurburn, Bo met with Hugh Culverhouse and Buccaneers officials on a a visit that Tampa Bay lied about. The team said the NCAA had approved the visit when it actually had not, which caused Jackson to lose his eligibility for the remainder of his final College Baseball season with the Tigers.
Because of this, he vowed to never play for the Bucs so they shouldn't bother drafting him. They did, and the rest is history. Bo chose to go play baseball for the Kansas City Royals and the Buccaneers lost his draft rights the following year. He eventually played in the NFL but it was for the Los Angeles Raiders instead of Tampa Bay.
While the 1986 NFL Draft wasn't a particularly memorable one, it's hard to think that the Bucs wouldn't have been better off with Jim Everett as a young quarterback to try and build around -- or literally any other player than Bo who would have actually suited up for the team.
Tampa Bay eventually pulled itself out of the darkness of the late-80s with some great decisions around a decade later when the Bucs landed both Derrick Brooks and Warren Sapp in the same draft, and the wait was worth it.
Enough time has passed that the wounds from this have healed, but it will always be worth wondering if the Bucs might have found some success sooner if they hadn't made one of the biggest draft blunders ever.
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