The Tampa Bay Curse is a sports hex that affects NFL teams that lose to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. No team that has lost to Tampa Bay during the regular season has gone on to win the Super Bowl in the same season. Tampa Bay is the only NFL team to hold that distinction, and through 2008, it is still active. The curse may be related to the historical bad luck and poor performance of the franchise. Tampa Bay won Super Bowl XXXVII but there is no sign that the victory has relieved the effects of the curse.
The Buccaneer team lived through several perceived curses itself. For the better part of its existence, the team had not won a championship, had never won a road playoff game, never won a game under 40°F (4°C), had never returned a punt nor a kickoff for a touchdown, had a losing record at home, and had never come back from 21 points to win a game. As of 2008, all of those distinctions had been lifted.
In a related issue, some local residents believe that Tampa Bay franchises are cursed to endure years of futility, as has been the case for the area's three major sports teams. The 1976 Bucs had been the only NFL team after WWII to finish an entire season winless and tieless (0-14-0) until the 2008 Detroit Lions went 0-16-0. Those Buccaneers eventually set a league record for consecutive losses (26) over the 1976-1977 seasons. The Buccaneers also hold the league record with 12 consecutive seasons (1983-1994) with 10 or more losses.
The Tampa Bay Lightning are the only team in NHL history to lose 50 or more games in four consecutive seasons (1997-2001), though this was eliminated on a technicality resulting in a scoring change that added overtime losses to record scorekeeping being made retroactive to the prior year. They then won the Stanley Cup in 2004. The Tampa Bay Rays finished in last place in the American League East Division nine out of the first ten years of their existence, owning the worst record in all of Major League Baseball four times before winning the American League pennant in 2008.
Sports-related curses. (2009, January 17). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18:35, January 17, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sports-related_curses&oldid=264598455
