SUPER BOWL CHAMPS Bucs welcome return to Tampa

Players and coaches are looking forward to a normal practice schedule.
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- As much as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers enjoy life at Disney's Wide World of Sports Complex, they're more than ready to return home to Tampa.
Friday morning's one-hour practice marked the end of a long, hot and draining training camp for the defending Super Bowl champions. The speed with which the players ran off the field and into the locker room was almost blinding -- and their equipment made it out of the complex just as fast.
"I'm ready to go too," head coach Jon Gruden said. "I had a great time here, but football's a great game and we can play it back in Tampa where we live, and where we get our coffee in the morning.
"We got a great amount done here, I'm respectful of that. At the same time I think we're all ready to go back and see our families a little bit and get ourselves into the rest of the preseason."
Change of venue
Starting Saturday, the players will readjust from two-a-days at Disney to just one scheduled practice at One Buc Place. All of those workouts are closed to the public, another difference from training camp.
"We're looking forward to that, getting home and getting back into our regular routine over at One Buc Place," strong safety John Lynch said.
"The worst part about playing football is probably two-a-days, just getting through it and waking up early and just being on that grind every day," said rookie quarterback Chris Simms. "So it's always nice to get back into just a regular NFL season mode."
There will be a short walk-through today before Tampa Bay heads to St. Louis for a Monday night preseason game with the Rams.
The Bucs' final two preseason games are at home, against the Houston Texans next Saturday and against Jacksonville on Aug. 28.
"This Orlando experience to me has been as good as it can get in terms of training camp setup," Gruden said. "I'm very pleased with the facilities, the hotel, the practice site was great, and the fans gave us great support when we needed it."
Smooth-running camp
One person who was a little sad to see the Bucs leave Orlando is Dwight Dorr, manager of premium special events at Disney's Wide World of Sports. Dorr's staff -- or cast as he refers to them -- made a number of adjustments from the 2002 camp to make things easier.
More seats were added to accommodate the growing number of Bucs fans, with bleachers placed in the north end zones of both practice fields. A total of 39,600 people attended all 31 practice sessions over 19 days, an average of 1,277 per workout.
Last year they drew just over 40,000, but that included a two-day turnout of over 12,000 fans for the combined workouts with the Miami Dolphins. Plus this year's 29-day training camp was interrupted for 10 days when the Bucs were in Tokyo.
"I thought it went extremely well. We were able to do some things this year that we couldn't do last year due to other events," Dorr said. "This year we were able to provide them with a working facility that really I think, to use a baseball expression, was a home run."
Facilities
Once the Bucs get settled back at their team headquarters in Tampa, negotiations are expected to begin with Disney on a new agreement. Currently, the Bucs are considering plans to build a practice facility just north of Raymond James Stadium, but that's still a few years off.
Dorr said he and his staff are moving forward as though the team will again return to Wide World of Sports next summer. He said he has been using the fact that the Bucs won their first Super Bowl the same year they first trained in Orlando as a key selling point.
"I certainly hope [they return]," Dorr said. "I think they bring a value to our complex that's maybe tough to measure in dollars and cents."