I’m wondering if Allen Barra’s “The Last Coach”, the recently released biography of University of Alabama football legend Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant, is worth a peek.

Not so much because I’m interested in the subject matter — I love the NFL, but don’t give a whit for the minor leagues college game. But I’m interested if Barra ever came across a persistent rumor about Bryant having been offered the inaugural head coaching job of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers by the team’s first owner, Hugh Culverhouse.

A Web search has yielded nothing. I’m not sure just how true it is. I remember hearing about it a couple of times, back when I was working in Sports at the St. Petersburg Times, but don’t remember the source or the veracity of it.

The connections are clear: Culverhouse was an Alabama alum, and made his mark on the university. Bryant was heading to the twilight of his career by the time the expansion Bucs joined the NFL in 1976. And, more tangentially, Bryant’s immediate successor at Alabama, Ray Perkins, was eventually hired as Bucs coach, being declared by Culverhouse to be “his Vince Lombardi”. So I can see how all those tidbits could be molded into a false rumor.

If the Bryant-to-Bucs thing ever was true, it’s just as well that it didn’t happen. Otherwise, Tampa Bay would have been denied John McKay’s coaching platitudes, including his assessment of those early-history teams:

Throughout it all, there was McKay, laughing through the pain. In those awkward, stumbling first steps, McKay was the only reason to smile when someone mentioned that professional football, sort of, had come to Tampa Bay. The execution of his offense? He was in favor of it. The future of his kicker? Capece was kaput.

No way could the Bear have been so loquacious. He probably would have beat on his kicker instead.