After the initial thrill of the announcement, many fans and observers both locally and beyond the Bay inevitably asked the question: “Why?”

Why should Tampa Bay get another MLS team?

Ralph’s Mob marches for the Rowdies while acknowledging a fallen friend.

The question is a fair one. Tampa Bay, of course, was part of Major League Soccer when the league first began in 1996 — the “Tampa Bay Mutiny” were one of the 10 original MLS clubs. The Mutiny saw success early on, winning the Supporter’s Shield in ’96 on the feet of star players Carlos Valderrama and Roy Lassiter. However, the team folded in 2001. The death of the Mutiny will have many critics asking: if the first round of MLS in Tampa Bay failed, why should the area be given a second chance?

Well, basically Major League Soccer didn’t give Tampa Bay a fair shake. The Mutiny were doomed to fail almost from the beginning, arriving on unstable ground and faced with many subsequent tremors caused by the poor management of the league.

First and foremost, the league elected to create a totally new team identity for the Bay Area in the Mutiny rather than returning to the historic name Rowdies. The Rowdies were Tampa’s first professional team, and the first to begin the local tradition of using the “Tampa Bay” moniker. They won a championship in the ‘70s and had crowds of 50,000+ in Tampa Stadium to see Rodney Marsh and the Rowdies take on Pele and the New York Cosmos, arguably North America’s richest soccer rivalry. Rather than capitalize on the nostalgia and recognition of the established brand, Tampa Bay’s first MLS team was given a new name.

The Mutiny primary (left) and secondary logos. I see no pirates.

“Mutiny” itself isn’t a bad name for a sports franchise, especially in a city whose history is filled with pirate lore, annually celebrated with a beads-and-booze festival known as Gasparilla, the Floridian version of Mardi Gras. Even the Mutiny’s co-tenants were named the Buccaneers, and the stadium they played in had a gigantic pirate ship that actually fired cannons. But while the name made some sense, the way it was depicted was nothing short of, well… confusing. Rather than portraying a gang of rebellious swashbucklers armed with cutlasses, the team’s logos depicted a bat and some sort of spider monster, both contorted into the shape of an “M.” Huh? Former DC United president Kevin Payne and original Mutiny head coach Thomas Rongen explained in this Sports Illustrated article:

PAYNE: I told them, “I don’t get this [Tampa Bay] ‘Mutiny’. What’s with the symbol?” They said, “Oh, it’s a mutant bat.” “Okay, what does that have to do with Mutiny?” “You know — Mutiny, mutant.” I said, “Those are two different words with completely different meanings. They just share some letters. What are you doing?” RONGEN: What the f — -? A mutant bat? What are we representing? Nike must have had a few guys smoking dope, coming up with the craziest things.

Needless to say, the aesthetic of the infant franchise did little to endear the fans.

Of course, branding can be fluid and changed, and maybe we would have seen a different type of Mutiny eventually if the team survived longer than it did. The bigger reason why the Mutiny failed was the ownership, or lack thereof. MLS owned and operated the Mutiny all 6 years of the club’s existence, hoping to sell the team to a local owner eventually. It never did.

Leagues are inevitably poor at running individual franchises for an extended period of time, and this case was no different. The team soon began racking up major financial losses, reportedly an average annual loss of around $2 million over the team’s six seasons. Operating costs only increased over time, due in large part to the team moving from the old Tampa Stadium to brand-new Raymond James Stadium in 1999. As the team didn’t own either stadium, the Mutiny had to essentially rent it to play there, and moving to the new facility initially increased the lease fee by $10,000 and escalated in subsequent seasons. The rent for stadium office space for team operations also increased by moving to Ray Jay.

Carlos Valderrama was the centerpiece for the Mutiny’s early success.

The team’s success on the pitch fluctuated. The Mutiny had the most points in the 1996 regular season — the inaugural MLS year — but missed the playoffs in 1998. Partial blame for the drop in performance was the growth of the young league, as the addition of the Chicago Fire and Miami Fusion in 1998 brought an expansion draft which poached players from the league’s established teams and thinned the overall talent pool. The biggest loss was 1996 MLS MVP Carlos Valderrama, who was “traded” to Miami prior to the 1998 season. MLS has an infamous history of unilaterally deciding which players will play for which team, and former Mutiny coach John Kowalski claims that the Valderrama trade was involuntary. The loss of El Pibe was a massive blow to the structure of the team. Without Valderrama around to funnel him assists, 1996 Golden Boot winner Roy Lassiter struggled to score goals and was soon traded as well. With the two centerpieces to the Mutiny’s early success gone, the team finished 12–20 and in 5th place in Eastern Conference. This is what we call the Snowball Effect, and it put the Mutiny in a precarious position.

The situation the league had put the Mutiny in made a purchase of the team unattractive to local businessmen. MLS had ongoing conversations with a reported 6–12 possible investors since the inaugural year, but no deal was ever agreed upon. The best chance the league had was the owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (and eventual owner of Premier League side Manchester United), Malcolm Glazer, who coincidentally had already made some money off of the Mutiny through the club’s lease at Raymond James Stadium. The Glazer family strongly considered making a deal, but unfavorable revenue projections and a reported spike in asking price left any agreement unsigned. The Tampa Bay Mutiny remained ownerless.

With no other options, MLS folded the team on January 8, 2002.