Longtime Bucs team doctor and Tampa surgeon dies at 83

Dr. Joe Diaco, a longtime Tampa area surgeon and the first doctor of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, where he became one of the longest-running team doctors in NFL history, died Dec. 19. He was 83. 

A U.S. Air Force veteran, Diaco was also a board member of the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority, where he helped oversee Tampa International Airport. Diaco died surrounded by family, according to his official obituary. Several relatives and others in the community posted statements on social media about Diaco. “I just lost my HERO and father, Dr. Joseph Diaco, this morning,” wrote Dr. Dan Diaco, one of Joe Diaco’s three sons, on Facebook. “I miss you Dad. Thank you for helping the world around you!”

The Bucs and the Glazer family, which owns the team, also released a statement. 

"Joe was an outstanding physician who served the Tampa Bay Buccaneers organization honorably for more than three decades," the team says. "Over the years, he grew very close to our family and became a trusted and valued friend. During his time as our primary team physician, Joe was an invaluable resource for our players and organization, but he became so much more to those of us who had the privilege of experiencing his friendship. He was compassionate, caring and dedicated to helping others.”

Diaco was born in Philadelphia, where he received his college and medical school education. He later became chief resident of surgery at the University of Pennsylvania. Then he was a surgeon in the Air Force, according to his obituary, where he reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. After that he moved to Tampa, where he opened a surgical practice and was chief of surgery and chief of staff at St. Joseph's Hospital. 

During the Christmas season, Diaco's office was always filled with gifts from grateful, uninsured patients who could not afford his services, the family says. He was also known to take on difficult cases others would turn down. “He never turned anyone away, and he treated everyone with dignity and respect,” the obituary states. 

Diaco had an identical twin brother, Dr. Nicholas Diaco, a prominent Los Angeles area surgeon, who died in September 2018. “Like his identical twin, Nick, Dr. Diaco brought new technologies into the operating room and invented or improved surgical procedures, including the laparoscopic hernia repair,” the obituary states. “One of his nicknames was 'Daytona Joe,' because of his speed and proficiency in the operating room.”

Diaco was named head doctor for the Bucs in 1976 and held that position until 2008. From 2002 to 2009, Diaco’s son Dan, a Tampa plastic surgeon, was also a physician with the team. The elder Diaco, the obituary states, helped create the NFL Combine, which ranks college players in a variety of skills. He also “became so well known as an innovative sports medicine doctor and surgeon, that he had the privilege of operating on numerous world-class athletes in other sports,” the family says, including MLB and the NHL. Diaco remained close with the Glazers and Bucs’ players and coaches — and was so well regarded that the team gave him a Super Bowl ring in 2021, more than a decade after he retired.

Outside medicine, Diaco was a golfer and devoted family man. In addition to his three sons and their wives, he’s survived by six grandchildren and four nieces and nephews. “He never missed an award ceremony, sporting event or Grandparents' Day,” the obituary states.