A Rather Rambling History of the
Tampa Bay Football History Network
by Richard Ziegler

Introduction

The Tampa Bay Football History Network dates back to 1993, when it was originally known as DaBucs. This article chronicles the Tampa Bay Football History Network, which must be precluded by brief histories of the Board of Trade BBS and the Pasco BBS Magazine. Maybe it will provide some insight on why someone would undertake a project of this magnitude.

During 1991, I became a fan of hobby bulletin board systems (BBS). The precursor to the Internet and World Wide Web, hobbyists had been operating BBSs since the first board went up in 1978. For millions of people, these systems were their introduction to the on-line world.

Using a 1200 baud modem, I was introduced to the world of bulletin boards. The local on-line community in the New Port Richey area of Pasco County, Florida provided plenty of entertainment. That 1200 baud modem burned out quickly and was upgraded to 2400 baud. Hard to believe how fast 2400 seemed back then.

Early in 1992, I decided to start my own BBS and paid over $800 for a USRobotics Courier Dual Standard 19.2 bps modem. The new modem was needed to accept "high-speed" calls into the board. Since my favorite boards ran it, the PCBoard BBS software package was selected to operate the system. After months of tinkering with the software, the Board of Trade BBS was born in June of 1992.

It was rewarding, but it took a lot of hard work to build the Board of Trade BBS into one of the more popular systems in the area. After six years, and almost 50,000 calls, the board went off-line in August of 1998. People were now out surfing the Web and the number of BBSs has dwindled drastically with only a few diehards remaining. Perhaps, a future article on DaBucs Web site will more completely detail the history of the Board of Trade BBS and the early days of the on-line community.

When operating a bulletin board, or a Web site, having original content is the best way to increase exposure and activity. When the board was up, numerous things were tried. Some were good ideas that worked, others were not. As to the development of the BBS, the best idea was to publish an on-line magazine.

Click here for a scan of one of the welcoming screens used on the Board of Trade BBS. The basic color scheme was a light blue.

The first issue of the Pasco BBS Magazine was introduced on the day after Christmas 1992. It received a good reception and other systems would become "Official Distribution" sites. System operators from all over the country, and one from England, displayed the ASCII text file on their boards. The magazine featured articles and interviews with Shareware authors, BBS operators and some of the biggest names in the industry. The Pasco BBS Magazine was published sixty-one consecutive months. It had an incredible five year run, from the January 1993 issue until the final issue of January 1998. Maybe a complete history of the Pasco BBS Magazine, and even highlights from past issues, will appear on this site in the future.

Another idea to increase traffic on the board was to develop a Shareware program. The Board of Trade BBS was acting as the home for some local Shareware authors and as a distribution site for numerous others. After being away from actual programming for some time, and already enjoying writing the magazine, it was decided to do a text based program.

Click here for a scan of the masthead for the Pasco BBS Magazine.

During the 1993 football season, information was gathered for what would become the first version of DaBucs. It was originally thought this would be the first in a Shareware Sports Database Series. A few days after the Super Bowl, on February 2, 1994, version 1.0 of DaBucs was released. DaBucs v1.0 featured partial text and those who registered would receive the complete version. Since the original reason for doing the program was to promote the BBS, and due to a lack of registrations, the next version was released as Copyrighted Freeware with the complete text.

The original versions of DaBucs were DOS based. The menu driven format was also used to create another Freeware program called BBS Basics. That program gave information to familiarize new users on how bulletin board systems worked.

After the initial release, updated versions of DaBucs were released twice a year to coincide with the end of the NFL and Arena league seasons. Each version grew to contain additional statistics and information. The last DOS based version was released in February of 1998. With the Board of Trade BBS going off-line that summer, the original reason for creating the program no longer existed.

Click here for a scan of the DOS version of DaBucs. The original color scheme featured orange. When the Tampa Bay Buccaneers changed uniforms a red and gray color scheme was used.

With the expectation DaBucs would appear in a different format at some future date, the information was keep current. As a matter of fact, there was a plan to create a version which had photos and sound in more of a multimedia type presentation. Many hours were put into developing that version, and it had reached substantial completion, before a hard drive failure ended the project.

On September 2, 1999, version 2.0 of DaBucs was released as a Windows help file. It was basically the same text based format as the DOS version, however, it was designed to run under Windows. The Windows help file format did allow for more features than preceding versions. About a week after the release of v2.0, this Web site was started as the home of DaBucs.

Shortly after the release of version 2.1 on February 2, 2000, virtually the entire program was put on-line. It took over 200 individual web pages to create the "DaBucs Tampa Bay Football History DataBase" on this site. This web site could now be promoted as "the most comprehensive source on the history of Tampa Bay football guaranteed." A cash award was offered to anyone who could locate a more comprehensive source.

The last release of the Windows help file format for DaBucs, version 2.2, was released on April 5, 2000. Now, the Web is the place to find DaBucs - The History of Tampa Bay Football. This way it is easier to keep information current.

Click here for a complete release history of DaBucs.

At the end of 2002, after using the name DaBucs for almost nine years, it was decided to change the name of the Web site to the Tampa Bay Football History Network. Since the data contained on the Web site continued to grow at rapid rate, and photos and graphics were added, it was felt that the name change was more reflective of the nature of the site.

For almost ten years a GeoCities site was used for the domain. For the record, the URL was http://www.oocities.org/colosseum/pressbox/8121/. In the spring of 2009, Yahoo announced that GeoCities would be phased out. Over the 2009 Memorial Day weekend, the transition begun and this site finally had its own domain name.

What of the future? This site will continue to be a work in progress. It will continue to be a comprehensive history of football in the Tampa Bay area.