Some are likely to misunderstand this post. So Joe feels compelled to preface it with two comments:

1) Joe thinks the Buccaneers’ effort to have Raheem Morris deliver an inspirational message weekly to middle and high school kids in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties is phenomenal. Raheem The Dream cuts his brief speech at One Buc Place, and then it’s streamed on classroom TVs and in the hallways of all the districts’ schools every Tuesday. Great idea. Great use of technology. Great community outreach.

2) Joe is passionate about education and kids. So much so that Joe once ran for a School Board seat in Pinellas.

Ok.

All that said, the Bucs and Raheem The Dream screwed up his one-minute message to these nearly 100,000 kids today.

Raheem The Dream’s opening address of the year, heard this morning in schools, was all over the place. It wasn’t scripted and it needed to be.

In fact, it was so messy that the “excerpt” offered in a news release from One Buc Place today was sanitized to exclude a comment that was misleading and inappropriate.

In Raheem The Dream’s presentation that focused on overcoming adversity, he said “how people care about you, what people think about you, it really doesn’t matter.”

The Bucs news release omitted the “how people care about you” part, seemingly because how kids are cared for is critical in their lives and the team didn’t want to put those mis-spoken words from the head coach out there in a press release. 

However, the Bucs did not have Raheem The Dream redo the one-minute video address. So all those kids got the wrong message — the same message the Bucs communications department deleted. (You can watch the video at PCSB.org. Click on the character video in the lower right.)

Hey Bucs, if you feel compelled to clean up the news release, shouldn’t you also fix the actual recorded speech?

Regardless of today’s flub, the Bucs and Raheem The Dream need to script and sharpen these messages to kids. A needless screwup to such a vast audience is absolutely unacceptable.

There’s a lot more at stake than just a football game.