In the heyday of the great Tampa Bay Buccaneers clubs of the late '90s and early '00s, the team had a secret weapon, a master motivator of men: Monsignor Laurence E. Higgins.
"We loved his 'pregame speeches,'" said former Buccaneer safety John Lynch, laughing and verbally putting that phrase in quote marks. "I'm talking about his homilies on Saturday nights before games, of course. He was an athlete himself and he'd get into it. He'd get so fired up it would turn into a sort of pep talk and we loved it. He'd get us so fired up that we wanted to play on Saturday night!