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Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Malcolm Glazer passes away at 85

Malcolm Glazer (right) hugs head coach Jon Gruden after the Buccaneers' win in Super Bowl XXXVII. (Donald Miralle/Getty Images) Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner
Doug Farrar|

Malcolm Glazer (right) hugs head coach Jon Gruden after the Buccaneers' win in Super Bowl XXXVII. (Donald Miralle/Getty Images)

Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Malcolm Glazer, who bought the team in 1995, has passed away at age 85, the team announced Wednesday. Glazer, who also owned the Manchester United soccer team, oversaw a franchise timeline that included seven playoff berths and a Super Bowl title.

According to the team, the family will retain control of the Buccaneers. Three of Glazer's sons -- Bryan, Joel and Edward -- have taken charge of the team in recent years.

One of Glazer's first decisions after purchasing the team was to hire Tony Dungy as head coach in 1996. One year earlier, the team selected Warren Sapp and Derrick Brooks in the first two rounds of the draft, and these moves set the Bucs on a path of success that was in sharp contrast to the years before. From 1982 through '96, the team never had a winning record, but won consistently from '97 through the next few years. The decision to fire Dungy and bring in head coach Jon Gruden in 2002 paid off handsomely, as Gruden added traction to a formerly moribund offense, and the defense that Dungy had built thrashed the Raiders 48-21 in Super Bowl XXXVII.

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Later years were not quite as successful, and Gruden was sent packing after the 2008 season. The nadir of the Glazer era came in 2012 and '13, when former Rutgers head coach Greg Schiano was hired. Schiano presided over a short era in which paranoia and alienation seemed to be the norm, but the Glazers set that right with the 2014 hire of Lovie Smith -- a successful NFL head coach in his own right and a Dungy disciple. The Bucs seemed to win free agency this year with several astute transactions, and an ostensibly successful all-offense draft may have put them in the hunt for the NFC South once again.

Glazer took over the family's watch parts business at age 15 following the death of his father, and built several investments into a fortune over time. He is survived by his wife Linda, six children and 14 grandchildren.

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Doug Farrar
DOUG FARRAR

SI.com contributing NFL writer and Seattle resident Doug Farrar started writing about football locally in 2002, and became Football Outsiders' West Coast NFL guy in 2006. He was fascinated by FO's idea to combine Bill James with Dr. Z, and wrote for the site for six years. He wrote a game-tape column called "Cover-2" for a number of years, and contributed to six editions of "Pro Football Prospectus" and the "Football Outsiders Almanac." In 2009,  Doug was invited to join Yahoo Sports' NFL team, and covered Senior Bowls, scouting combines, Super Bowls, and all sorts of other things for Yahoo Sports and the Shutdown Corner blog through June, 2013. Doug received the proverbial offer he couldn't refuse from SI.com in 2013, and that was that. Doug has also written for the Seattle Times, the Washington Post, the New York Sun, FOX Sports, ESPN.com, and ESPN The Magazine.  He also makes regular appearances on several local and national radio shows, and has hosted several podcasts over the years. He counts Dan Jenkins, Thomas Boswell, Frank Deford, Ralph Wiley, Peter King, and Bill Simmons as the writers who made him want to do this for a living. In his rare off-time, Doug can be found reading, hiking, working out, searching for new Hendrix, Who, and MC5 bootlegs, and wondering if the Mariners will ever be good again.

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