If you like a story with a good end, try this one

By Charlie Barnes, Executive Director - Seminole Boosters

Sometimes, things work out better than you hoped.

Five years ago we invited a few major contributors and potential large donors to meet with us for lunch. There were only a few dozen people, but they were the first to hear the details of our Seminole Boosters’ capital campaign for athletics.

Booster President Andy Miller presented the case for a capital campaign based on the needs of our program. Money was needed to pay for the athletic scholarship endowment and build new facilities that would make us competitive with other, older schools.

We arranged the tables in the center of the cavernous ballroom of the University Center Club. I told them, “This is our core group. Five years from today we’ll all meet in here again to celebrate the end of a successful campaign, and this beautiful room will be filled to capacity with people who have made contributions.”

Now, it’s five years later. Our Dynasty Campaign will end this month, Oct. 25, the night before we play Notre Dame in Tallahassee. We’ll have that spectacular celebration we promised, but it won’t be in the Ballroom. The (now) Tom & Ginny Futch Ballroom is too small to hold all the people who have made such generous contributions. We had to move it to the Civic Center.

Five years ago we hired consultants, specialists, and good ones at that, to assess our chances of raising the needed dollars. They studied and interviewed and poked around and kicked the tires and finally told us that we might be able to raise $35 million altogether over a five-year campaign.

They also told us that their study had turned up no potential contributions in the $1-million range, and they did not envision any at that level.

By the time we made the public announcement of the campaign three years later, we had already raised more than $40 million. We also announced a campaign goal of $70 million. At the end of the Dynasty Campaign, we will have recorded nearly 40 individual gifts of at least $1 million each, and we will have met and passed our $70-million goal.

One of the interesting bits of information churned up by the consultants was the fact that our alumni contribute to Florida State University at a markedly higher level than people of comparable age and means who are alumni of other institutions.

“Your alumni really stretch to give more than they should,” they said. They could offer no reason for that, so I’ll offer my own. My guess is that our alumni dig deeper because they embrace a common vision of our university. Our alumni feel that their university’s leadership has great integrity, spends money wisely and operates with a great deal of enthusiasm. We are all, as it were, members of the same team.

Now, we are within weeks of finishing a campaign that has lasted for years. We took an ambitious goal, and we will exceed it. The gorgeous park of first-class athletic facilities will have taken only around six years from conception to completion. The athletic scholarship endowment will have been effectively tripled.

When the campaign went public two years ago, Coach Bobby Bowden agreed to serve as chairman. We named it the Dynasty Campaign because this, as much as his football dynasty, is really his legacy. It is the legacy for future generations of men and women student-athletes in all sports who will know only Bowden’s name and will never know the man.

This August we sent letters from Coach Bowden to all Seminole Boosters who had not yet made a pledge to the campaign, to give them one final opportunity to contribute before the conclusion. In the letter, he told about having coached the legendary Ron Simmons 25 years ago.

Simmons, you’ll recall, was a nose guard of phenomenal ability, probably the best at his position in college football in the late 1970s. Bowden used to joke about how hard he worked to coach Simmons, about how he had to teach him all his moves. To one reporter who asked for the “coaching secret,” Bowden said that when the time was right, he’d send specific, written instructions to Simmons in the defensive huddle. “I’d write it down on a slip of paper and send it out onto the field to be handed to Simmons,” Bowden laughed. “It just said ‘Now!’”

And that is what I want to do with this October column. I’d like to put this paper into your hands with the gentle request that, in these final few weeks, if you have entertained any thought at all about pitching in to help endow our scholarships, or build the new facilities, the time to do so is now. Whatever you feel you can do, at whatever level, will be most appreciated.

You can reach me, or any member of the Seminole Booster staff, by calling 644-3484. Or, write us at Post Office Box 1353, Tallahassee 32302. Advertisements in this magazine will give you more detail about the various giving opportunities.

The big celebration will take place at the Civic Center on Friday night before the Notre Dame game. We’ll have a Las Vegas show, and lots of fun. It’s not open to the public, but all contributors to the Dynasty Campaign will receive an invitation. Trust me, it will be the best show in Tallahassee that night.

This is a story with a good ending, one even better than anticipated. Florida State’s loyal and passionate alumni deserve nothing less.