by Fred Seely
Editorial Director
The Gator Bowl Association officially opened its 2006-07 ticket campaign last week with three goals:
1. To sell out the Dec. 2 Atlantic Coast Conference championship football game at Alltel Stadium.
2. To sell out the Jan. 1 Toyota Gator Bowl.
3. To get the national championship college football game.
“Those have been our goals all along and all are now attainable,” said the bowl’s president, Rick Catlett, at the association’s committee meeting at PRI. “Some things take time and the process has to work its way out — that’s the national championship. We can get it. No question.”
Selling out the two local games, plus next season’s Florida State-Alabama match in late August or early September, are ways to keep the local bowl’s abilities in front of the decision-makers.
“The present system is not a good model and the NCAA is aware of it,” said Catlett. “When the model changes, we need to be in the mix.”
College football’s championship is decided by matching the top two teams at season’s end as determined by a compilation of several polls. Eight teams actually are chosen to play in four big-money games but only one determines the title. That one rotates annually between Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans and Phoenix.
This year’s match of Southern Cal and Texas wasn’t disputed but the previous season saw an unbeaten Auburn team left out while Southern Cal and Oklahoma played.
College presidents have been adamant against what would appear to be the most reasonable system, one followed by almost every other NCAA sport: a playoff. They have cited a number of reasons including time away from classwork.
“The next step, we think, will be a ‘plus one,’” said Catlett. “That would utilize the present Bowl Championship Series games plus add one more. That one is us, we hope.”
The four games would be played as they are now and then two of those teams would play for the championship. It’s no playoff but it may be better. Because the game rotates, Jacksonville would get the “plus one” every fifth year.
“I think the fifth bowl will be between us and Atlanta, and possibly Dallas,’ said Catlett. “I think we’ve built up a good track record with the Toyota Gator Bowl, the ACC, the Pigskin Classic (a preseason game) a few years ago and getting FSU and Alabama.
“We’ve never taken our eyes of the chance of having a national championship game here. Mayor Jake Godbold hired me in 1979 to work in his administration and told me, ‘You’re in charge of getting us a pro team.’
“That didn’t happen until 1993 with a different mayor, but it happened because of the groundwork we did starting in 1979.”
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The committee members have been assigned to one of 15 sales teams and the captains have been named:
Bob Booth, Payformance Corp.; Brian Cook, The Gardner Group; James Craig, Rogers Towers law firm; Kevin Greene, Reassurance Real Estate Services; freelance author Glenn Guzzo; Trevor Harkness, Montoya, Brower and Associates; and Gene Maszy, Wachovia.
Also, Amanda Napolitano, Idea Integration; Nancy Noe-Nichols, Zurich Insurance Services; Bob O’Neill, St. Augustine Hilton; Julio Salvador, McGuire Woods law firm; Jason Stringfellow, Stringfellow and Associates; Greg Stuart, Boston Scientific; and Glenn Warren, Harris Guidi law firm.
They will work under the direction of chair-elect Kelly Madden of Wachovia.
Early sales are up 7 percent over last year, said GBA Chairman Scott Keith of BB&T.
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The association released hotel occupancy figures which show that the inaugural Atlantic Coast Conference football championship last year gave the city another strong weekend.
Downtown occupancy was at 85.9 percent on the night before the Dec. 3 game and 93.3 percent on game night. That was a big jump over last year’s 61.1 and 77.8, respectively, and the revenue increase was 118.1 on Friday night and 82.8 on Saturday night.
Fans for the Florida State-Virginia tech game apparently weren’t interested in the beach cities as hotels in those areas showed only slight gains, but large increases were shown in other areas.