Mixed emotions

Gruden built Raiders for this game, but brought the Bucs

SAN DIEGO -- We've been prodding and picking at Jon Gruden for a couple of days now, and if you've ever seen Gruden storming the sidelines at an NFL game, you might figure that he doesn't take to picking and prodding very well.

Still, this is the Super Bowl, and this is THE story of this Super Bowl, so Gruden submits. He puts on a smile of sorts, answers the questions -- well, sort of -- and then retreats to break down more film, game plan some more, run practices and get his Tampa Bay Buccaneers ready to play the Oakland Raiders in Sunday's game.

This is an intensely personal week for the 39-year-old head coach, one that pits his new team against his old one, not even a year removed. Gruden is as responsible for the Raiders being here -- their top-ranked offense is really his top-ranked offense -- as he is for the Bucs' trip to San Diego.

"Certainly, in some ways," Gruden said, "I'm very proud and happy for those guys."

Gruden is all scowl and furrowed brow and in-your-face intensity on the sideline, but this week he has smiled, he has joked, he has taken all questions.

What really happened between you and Al Davis? Was the price the Bucs paid to pry you away from the Raiders really worth it? How hard will it be to coach against a team you built to take to the Super Bowl?

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Gruden tries, but many of the questions are just too painful, the answers too complicated. So he glosses over them, unwilling to dig deeper, to scrape at the scab that's still too fresh.

"I am a human being and I am a sensitive person and a very emotional guy," he says, his blue eyes unblinking under his tousled blond hair, his brow dipping into the bridge of his nose. "Without getting real deep and philosophical, there will be obvious emotions running through me."

The whole story of how Gruden went from the Raiders to the Bucs may never be known. Gruden doesn't want to spell it out. And his old boss, Davis ... well, who knows what goes on in Davis' head?

The story, as near as anyone can figure, probably went like this: Gruden chafed under Davis' rule and told friends he wouldn't coach in Oakland beyond the end of his contract, which was to run through the 2002 season. So Davis worked a trade to send him to Tampa Bay, which had just fired Tony Dungy, for $8 million and four draft picks.

That's how, it seems, one of the best young coaches in the league went from one conference to another, one winner to another, just to turn around and meet the Raiders less than a year later in the biggest game of all.

Weird, eh?

"I really didn't imagine this scenario," Gruden said the other day. "But usually those are the scenarios that come to be."

Gruden hasn't been the only one answering the barrage of questions this week. Every Oakland player and most of the Bucs have been asked about him, too. There has been veiled criticism from the Raiders aimed at their former coach. Oakland's Lincoln Kennedy went so far as to say Gruden had a Napoleon complex.

"I did have a little animosity at the start. But he decided to take his opportunity to make himself better," Kennedy said. "My concern came because I didn't know what it would do to our team."

But a Napoleonic complex?

"I'm 6-foot 7 and he's 5-foot-nothing. He's got the little scrunched up face, he takes shots at you ... to me, it's funny. It's hilarious," Kennedy said. "When a little guy wants to rule the world, I call it a Napoleonic complex."

Still, there are a lot of Oakland players who owe a lot to Gruden. Raiders quarterback Rich Gannon flourished under Gruden and this year was named the league's MVP. Jerry Rice was cast off by the 49ers but found a new life in Oakland.

"Jon is the reason I came to the Raiders," Rice said. "We bumped heads at times, but that's part of it. I thought he was an excellent coach."

The Bucs, of course, are ecstatic, despite the steep price they paid. Perennial playoff underachievers under Dungy, Gruden brought an intensity, not to mention an offense, to the already famed Tampa defense. All that landed the Bucs in their first Super Bowl.

None of it has made this week, or this game, any easier for Gruden. His heart, in a lot of ways, is in both places.

But his scowl will be on the Buccaneers' sideline Sunday.

John Donovan is a senior writer for CNNSI.com.

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