Even before the Buccaneers and the Falcons faced off on Dec. 13, 1992, the two head coaches had a strong dislike for each other. The hurt feelings extended back many years when Falcons coach Jerry Glanville was the head coach with the Houston Oilers and Buccaneers coach Sam Wyche headed up the roster for the Bengals.
You could understand why there was discomfort between the two.
Before arriving in Atlanta for the 1990 season, Glanville had spent four years from 1979-83 coordinating the Falcons defense. He eventually landed his first full-time coaching job as the Oilers head coach in 1985 after Hugh Campbell was fired for losing 22 of his first 30 games in Houston.
But the Elvis-loving Glanville turned around the franchise, leading the Oilers to three-straight playoff appearances, and despite the fact the Oilers were 28-19 under Glanville from 1987-89, owner Bud Adams fired him.
Before Glanville left, though, he had made enemies of a number of coaches throughout the league. In fact, commissioner Paul Tagliabue had to write Glanville a letter in 1990 to tell him to stop insulting opposing coaches.
The worst case, though, might have been Wyche, who didn't shield the public from his vitriolic views on Glanville.
During Cincinnati's Super Bowl run in 1988, the Wyche-led Bengals dominated the Glanville-led Oilers 44-21. Publicly, Glanville didn't seem overly mad, saying after the contest, "This game had a lot of turning points. We came back and thought we were going to make it a typical Cincinnati-Houston game, right down to the last play."
The next season, after losing a 26-24 contest to Houston in Week 10, the Bengals did this in Week 16, via the L.A. Times:
Here's how bad it got via the Washington Post: "So with the Bengals up 45-0 in the fourth quarter, Wyche calls for an onside kick and, go figure, the Oilers weren't expecting it and Cincy recovered. [Wyche] does opt to sit Boomer [Esiason], his star QB, and backup Erik Wilhelm end ups up throwing on fourth down near midfield and the Bengals score to go up 52-0. With the lead trimmed to 52-7, Wyche goes for a fake-reverse and a halfback option pass and they pull ahead, 59-7. There was also a fake-field goal attempts in there somewhere and ultimately with 21 seconds left he called timeout for a final field goal, capping the 61-7 blowout."
And it was clear that even with the 54-point win, Wyche was PISSED.
"We don't like this team," he said. "We don't like their people. When you get a chance to do it (run up the score), you do it. I wish today this was a five-quarter game."
And ...
"Jerry is an unusual coach. "Drop me a note if somebody likes this guy."
And the coup de grâce
"I just don't like Jerry Glanville," Wyche said. "I don't like phonies, and I don't think Jerry is a very genuine guy. The cheap shots they tried after our quarterback was down, their big mouths. Jerry tries coming up and talking to me before the game and when the cameras start rolling he puts his arm around you and smiles behind those dark glasses. When your football team is so talented and yet so undisciplined, you got to be ready to get kicked and the score run up on you. And that's exactly what happened today ... I feel sorry for the Houston players having to put up with him. He can take that hit-the-beach stuff and take it back to high school or wherever he got it from. He's a joke."
The rivalry at that point only grew hotter.
That rivalry/hatred continued when Glanville was with Atlanta and Wyche with Tampa Bay. In 1992, the Falcons fire-bombed the Buccaneers with Atlanta backup quarterback Wade Wilson, and yeah, Glanville rubbed it in.
The next year, the Buccaneers would beat the Falcons 31-24, but by then, the blowout magic was gone. It was the last time Wyche and Glanville would face each other from opposing sidelines. But Wyche never forgot the rivalry and the 61-7 destruction. From a 2011 interview:
"The year before the 61-7 game Jerry Glanville made a comment in the local paper saying that had the Oilers caught a TD pass they dropped, that we would've quit. Well, you don't tell a team they are quitters. So before the game, one of my players came up to me, I can't remember who it was now, and said in the moments before we go out onto the field in the locker room in an emotional moment and said, 'Sam, no matter what happens today, no matter what happens, don't let up.'
"Well, we were up 30-0 at halftime. Everything we did that day went right, and they couldn't get anything going. Our starters scored on the first drive of the second half, and I took out all the starters. And we just scored another 20 something points. The last part of the game we kicked a field goal to get to 61 to break the record for most points in Bengal history. And I thought, "Hey we'd come this far why not set the record?" We really didn't try to run the score up, it was just one of those days everything went right."
