by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
In some ways, Brian Goin spent a great deal of his childhood and early adulthood preparing for the 2008-09 sports year in Jacksonville.
He grew up in West Virginia as the son of a Bob Goin, a football coach who went on to become athletic director at Florida State from 1981-94. During those 13 years, Goin went with the Seminoles to just about every bowl game that existed.
After graduating from West Virginia in 1982, Goin coached football at Tulane University in New Orleans. In 1988, he took a job with the PGA Tour, cut his teeth by spending three years on the road and eventually ran the Ben Hogan Tour, which has evolved into the modern Nationwide Tour.
Today, Goin is the executive director of The Players Championship, the Tour’s richest tournament with the strongest field in golf. He’s also in line to serve as chairman of the 2008-09 football season’s Gator Bowl, a role that he relishes and feels more than prepared for.
“It works out good for me,” said Goin, who spends his days overseeing the major changes at the Player’s Stadium course and its facilities as the tournament prepares to move to May next year. “In 2007, the event changes and it will be out of the way in time for me to focus, as chair-elect, on helping Kelly Madden get ready for the 2008 game.”
Goin got involved with the Gator Bowl committee in 1998 and said the group has evolved with the game. At the time, the GBA only ran the Gator Bowl, a lower-tier bowl that was far behind the big five at the time — Orange, Sugar, Rose, Fiesta and Cotton bowls. It’s been played Jan. 1 or 2 since 1996 and aligned itself with three major conferences plus Notre Dame. The GBA also runs the ACC Championship game.
“I got lucky. I got involved when it was expanding,” said Goin. “Back then, there were only 12 or 15 people sitting at a table. A big part of that growth is due to guys like (retired BellSouth executive) Jim McCollum and (Compass Bank President and Florida Chamber of Commerce Chairman) Bob White. Part of life is being in the right place at the right time and that has happened to me several times.”
Goin said he will rely heavily on the staffs at both the GBA and the PGA Tour to help him get through both the 2008 Players Championship and the 2009 Gator Bowl.
“My staff has been around a long time and they make the event go,” said Goin of his Players Championship workers. “My role is to help the image of the tournament, sales and grow the tournament. They have a great staff at the Gator Bowl, too. (President) Rick Catlett and his team are top of the line. As chairman, I will not have to spend two days preparing for a meeting.”
Goin said he has moved up the GBA ladder in a similar fashion to the way Players Championship volunteers move up that ladder. Although the GBA doesn’t have 1,700 volunteers, Goin recognizes both the need and value of the volunteer group. Goin said when he moved to Jacksonville in 1995 with the Tour, he spent two tournaments as an assistant director before taking over the top spot for the ‘98 Players Championship. One of the first things he noticed was the huge number of volunteers and what they brought, and meant, to the event.
“I realized it would be good for me to get involved myself in other things,” he said of his initial desire to join the GBA.
Juggling two big events shouldn’t be a problem for Goin. He spent his first three years with the Tour on the road where he worked about 30 tournaments a year. As executive director of the Players Championship, Goin runs a tournament that draws 100,000 annually, will have a first prize of nearly $1.5 million next year and has seen its charitable contributions grow from about $50,000 to about $2.5 million each year over the past 10 years.