For roughly 15 years, few professional franchises were as putrid as the Bucs. From the early 1980s through the mid-1990s, the Bucs bravely lived up to their awful reputation.

Perhaps the worst coach of those dark days was the notorious Richard Williamson, whose qualifications for coaching seemed to be that he once played for Bear Bryant at Alabama.

For some reason, then-owner Hugh Culverhouse thought anyone who played for Bryant would make a great coach.

Williamson was walking proof of the fallacy of that belief.

Williamson, a receivers coach for the Panthers, recently announced his retirement. Some copy editor at BSPN.com had a bit of sinister fun with Vacation Man’s story on Williamson’s retirement claiming he was a coaching “icon.”

Williamson was very good at what he did. He joined the Panthers in 1994, a year before they started play, and he was widely considered one of the best receivers coaches around. He deserves a lot of credit for helping Steve Smith develop from a guy who was supposed to be nothing more than a kick returner into one of the league’s top receivers.

Williamson also guided Muhsin Muhammad, Patrick Jeffers, Raghib Ismail and Mark Carrier to at least one 1,000-yard receiving season each. More than that, Richardson was a rock on the coaching staffs of Dom Capers, George Seifert and John Fox.

He stepped in as offensive coordinator when Bill Musgrave abruptly walked away during the Seifert years and didn’t complain a bit when he went back to coaching receivers.

Vacation Man refers to Williamson as “classy.” He may have been, but he was also a highly s(p)itty head coach!