St. Petersburg Time, April 10th 1997

 The helmet is shiny and new, and from the looks of it, it will fit just fine in a running back's rib cage. The logo is scary and threatening, a screaming skull that, thankfully, does not wink.

There is a pirate ship on the shoulder. There are crossed swords on the helmet. There is red and pewter and a "Buccaneers" written in a script that looks as if it will bite.

But none of those are the best part of the Bucs' new threads.

The best part is this: So far, there are no cleat marks on the chests.

No one has run over these colors. No one has knocked them to the dirt and then pointed and laughed. No one has caused blood to dribble from a Bucs player onto one of these jerseys. No one has embarrassed this team and suggested it asked for it by the way it dressed.

Keith McCants never wore this uniform. Neither did Charles McRae or Broderick Thomas or Jack Thompson or Lars Tate. Bo Jackson never said no thanks to these colors. Sam Wyche never whispered a play into the ear hole of a pewter-colored helmet. Hugh Culverhouse never impressed a secretary by wearing a sports coat of matching color.

We still do not know if the Bucs are going to be a success. But from what we saw Wednesday, they are at least dressed for it. There are new duds on the old duds.

We have it on good authority that these clothes will make your feet run faster, as fast as they can fly. "I think it'll improve my quarterback rating by 15 points, and I'll have another 10 touchdown passes," Trent Dilfer said. "The logo alone is worth eight fewer interceptions."

Not only that, but they will make you more powerful than a locomotive. "I'll probably double my touchdowns and yardage," Mike Alstott said. "And I'll catch 100 passes."

Not only that, but they will let you know what evil lurks in the hearts of men. "In this uniform, you're talking about 300 tackles and 10 sacks," said linebacker Hardy Nickerson. "And maybe a couple of touchdowns off fumbles."

Okay, okay. The players were laughing as they said these things, clowning in the euphoria of the afternoon. They know - and deep down, so do the fans - that the clothes may make the man, but they don't put him in the end zone. The team picture is going to look a lot nicer, but everything else still has to change between huddles.

But when a franchise has been a uniform disaster, it isn't a bad idea to change the uniform. And so it seemed Wednesday, when nearly a thousand fans stood outside the Tampa Convention Center and cheered wildly while the band played and the players shot fists into the air.

Never has a team been cheered quite so loudly for the singular achievement of - ta-da - changing its clothes. The skeptic in you wonders how loud the cheers will be once it can walk to school by itself.

In other words, the uniforms seemed to be a smashing success, even though attorneys for Bill Poe did not have an immediate comment.

Such euphoria would not have happened most places, because most places wouldn't be so desperate to shed the symbolism of the past. Denver, for instance, recently laid an egg by switching from orange, because its fans could recollect four AFC titles won in those colors.

Here, the Bucs needed a change of clothes like someone freshly in the witness relocation program. Especially considering the way the old uniform used to look. There are sports shops around America that haven't moved a Bucs jersey in so long that the ones in the window still say "Spurrier" on the back.

As of this weekend, you will be able to buy jerseys in orange crushed for about a dollar and a half. Be sure to wash the cobwebs out before wearing.

Ask Nickerson how popular Bucs merchandise is. Last year, he went to the Pro Bowl and packed a couple of Bucs helmets, some caps and T-shirts and some sweats. It is customary for the Pro Bowlers to trade such paraphernalia.

The trouble is, Nickerson was like a kid in a lunchroom whose parents had wrapped him a cabbage sandwich. No one would trade with him. "They would go, `Uh, I don't have anything that will go with that.' "

If the orange was bad - and Nickerson can tell you all the jokes about Creamsicles and fluorescent pants you care to hear - then the pirate on the helmet was worse. He was called Bucco Bruce, and he was compared to everything from Salvador Dali with a knife through his head to Sandra Bullock with a mustache. And the players won't miss him at all.

"He was wimpy," Dilfer said. "And I can't say anything worse about anyone."

"Guy like that comes ashore, and he isn't going to do anything," Nickerson said. "You could beat him up and steal his boat."

There was a scene worth remembering in January in New Orleans, two days before the Super Bowl. A group of actors was dressed as pirates, and a short man wore a familiar plume in his hat and a mustache.

Across the room, general manager Rich McKay pointed. "It's Bucco Bruce!" he said. "He's killing us. We've got to get him off our helmets."

Now he is off. This helmet looks bolder, stronger. Nickerson held his in his hand and turned it over. His new Harley-Davidson, he said, is almost the same color. Suffice it to say Nickerson never had a motorcycle in the colors of the old Bucs uniform.

It could backfire, of course. If the team fails to win, there will be the temptation to see that as defense of the old colors. Fans will chant "Bring back Bruce," and someone will suggest that the skull really is Bruce, after all, only after the piranha were through with him.

In a way, then, this only stresses the mission this team must take. Yes, the uniforms are nice. But as a free-agent acquisition, you wish you could do a little better than a pewter helmet. A new logo is nice, but it isn't a No. 1 draft pick. And trading orange for red won't catch Green Bay.

For now, however, the uniforms are fresh and clean. Better, they are unbeaten, untied and unsoiled.

Someday, maybe we'll even see how good they look in an end zone.
Illustration

COLOR PHOTO, JIM STEM, (3); COLOR DRAWING; Caption: Buccaneers linebacker Hardy Nickerson shows off the team's new helmet and uniform Wednesday. The crowd at the Tampa Convention Center cheers wildly when the Bucs' new look is unveiled on Wednesday.; Team owner Malcolm Glazer holds up a new helmet.; The Tampa Bay Buccaneers' new logo.