Lee Roy Selmon: The Gentle Giant Who Built the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Never Stopped Giving Back
Before Tom Brady, before the Super Bowl wins, before Tampa Bay became a football town, there was Lee Roy Selmon.
In 1976, the expansion Buccaneers made the Oklahoma defensive tackle the first overall pick in the NFL Draft. He walked into a franchise that would lose its first 26 games. He never complained. He just kept showing up.
From Eufaula to Tampa
Selmon grew up in tiny Eufaula, Oklahoma, one of nine children. All three Selmon brothers, Lee Roy, Dewey, and Lucious, played at Oklahoma under Barry Switzer, winning back-to-back national championships. Lee Roy was the best of them, and that’s saying something.
Tampa Bay was a mess when he arrived. The Bucs went 0-14 his rookie year and 0-12 the next. But Selmon’s relentless pass rush and quiet leadership helped turn the franchise around. By 1979, the Bucs were in the NFC Championship Game.
The Gentle Giant
What made Selmon different wasn’t just the six Pro Bowl selections or the 1979 NFL Defensive Player of the Year award. It was who he was off the field. In a sport full of big personalities, Selmon was soft-spoken, humble, and genuinely kind. Teammates called him the nicest man in professional football, and they meant it.
After retiring in 1984, he didn’t leave Tampa. He earned a master’s degree from USF, became the university’s athletic director, and poured himself into community work. The Lee Roy Selmon Expressway, the toll road connecting downtown Tampa to Brandon, bears his name. So does the restaurant he co-founded, Lee Roy Selmon’s, which became a Tampa institution.
A Legacy Beyond Football
Selmon was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1995. He’s in the College Football Hall of Fame too. But ask anyone in Tampa, and they’ll tell you his legacy isn’t about awards. It’s about what he built after football, a life of service in the community that adopted him.
Lee Roy Selmon passed away in 2011 at the age of 56. Tampa Bay lost more than a football legend that day. They lost one of the finest people the city had ever known.
