Osceola and Renegade
The Osceola and Renegade mascots were conceived by Bill Durham, a Tallahassee businessman and Florida State alumnus. He came up with the concept of a horseback-riding Seminole mascot as early as 1962, when he was voted into the school's homecoming court. He returned to the idea in 1977, and won the support of Ann Bowden, wife of head football coach Bobby Bowden, who helped make the idea a reality. Durham contacted the Seminole Tribe of Florida about the project, and chairman Howard Tommie had tribe members make the first costume for Osceola. Durham provided the horse, while Bowden helped acquire the various permits necessary to allow a horse onto the field.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
A name-the-team contest resulted in the nickname "Buccaneers", a reference to José Gaspar, the mythical Florida pirate who is the inspiration for Tampa's Gasparilla Pirate Festival. The team name was opposed by St. Petersburg businessmen on the grounds that it emphasized Tampa at the expense of other Bay Area cities, until NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle himself met with them to encourage their support. Their uniforms and "Bucco Bruce" winking pirate logo were designed by "Tampa Tribune" artist Lamar Sparkman using colors drawn from the state's four major college teams at the time: orange from the universities of Miami and Florida, and red from Florida State and the University of Tampa. They were one of the few teams to wear white home uniforms, forcing opponents to wear their warmer dark uniforms in Tampa's afternoon heat. The team's first home was Tampa Stadium, which had been built in 1967 to attract an NFL franchise and was expanded in 1974 to seat just over 72,500 fans.