FSU may be great but the seats won't be

By Charlie Barnes, Executive Director - Seminole Boosters

Were your Fiesta Bowl seats bad? Were you disappointed to see that 95 percent or more of FSU's seats were in the end zone? Florida State's allocation of bowl tickets is a problem, and not a small one.

Let's talk about bowls and tickets and real life at the top of the college-football food chain. Many of our most generous fans are angry at the location of their tickets for the Fiesta Bowl, and probably the Sugar Bowl before that and the Orange Bowl before that. They bring people to the games as guests, and then are embarrassed to be seated dead in the end zone even though they contribute huge pots of money to the Boosters.

For the Fiesta Bowl, Florida State received 16,000 tickets. All of them were bad, with the rare exception of odd pairs scattered here and there, and maybe a few sets of four in a decent location. If you and your friends sat dead in the end zone, you could chat with members of President D'Alemberte's Official Party. They were right there with you.

I'm told the ticket business is an art. We found out at the last possible minute that we weren't going to New Orleans or Miami; we didn't realize we were going to Phoenix until thousands of Hurricane fans flooded the field sweeping dejected UCLA Bruins aside. There was a window of perhaps 48 hours for our fans to decide about going. Getting tickets wasn't a problem; getting there was the problem. There were virtually no commercial flights with empty seats.

When we suddenly found ourselves headed for the desert, the decision was made to open ticket sales up to all 17,000 Seminole Boosters immediately.

Phone company records confirm that more than 300,000 phone calls were made to the Ticket Office over two days. All the tickets were sold quickly.

The Fiesta Bowl guaranteed each of the two teams somewhere between $12 million and $13 million. Ponder that for a moment - a financial obligation on the order of $25 million just as a payout to the visiting schools.

Here's where FSU's money went. From our $12 million-$13 million take, the Fiesta Bowl budgeted travel expenses for FSU of $1.5 million, a figure recommended by the NCAA. Athletic Director Dave Hart added some money from general revenues to that so we could take the entire Marching Chiefs band to the historic event. The balance will be sent to the Atlantic Coast Conference, where it will be divided into a pie of nine slices. FSU will then receive one of those slices.

Payouts from the Sugar and Rose and Orange Bowls are also enormous, on the order of $8 million per team. And since Bowls have accepted this huge obligation, they have been most creative in finding ways to raise the money.

So why did we get bad seats in the Fiesta Bowl?

The universal way of raising the large sums is through sponsors. Sponsors are asked to make massive contributions, and in turn, they are given blocks of the best tickets. All the best tickets, in fact.

I thought I saw whole blocks of FSU fans sitting on the 50-yard line. Turned out they were Arizona State fans mixed with Arizona Cardinals supporters. Right colors, wrong teams. No doubt they were local sponsors enjoying their fine, expensive seats. The FSU and Tennessee fans you saw sitting in mid-field grandeur did not buy their game tickets from either school's ticket offices.

Dave Hart says there is no doubt that in negotiating these extraordinarily high payoffs to the schools, the big football powers have given up some benefits for the fans.

"There is going to have to be some adjustment made, some renegotiation, even if it means the schools have to accept a lower payout," he said. "To have our fans treated this way is intolerable."

Hart is not the only one saying these things.

Here's good advice: When the FSU Ticket Office mails out the preseason Bowl ticket order form this August, order your Sugar Bowl tickets then. Don't wait. If we don't go, you don't have to pay. Make contacts now for hotel rooms. We're looking square into the face of New Year's Eve 2000 in New Orleans.

Are you mad, and say you don't care, and you're not going the distance down I-10 toward Louisiana to support your Seminoles? I hope that's not the case. The reality of the world Florida State inhabits is this: If anyone is to care for the Seminoles, it will have to be you. Sugar Bowl officials don't care whether you come or not. You want to know who does care? They care in Shreveport, at the Independence Bowl. They do sincerely care about your comfort at the Music City Bowl in Nashville. I remember the All-American Bowl in Birmingham in 1986. So many of us were surly and unhappy, a 6-5 Seminole team against an unremarkable 6-5 Indiana team. The weather was as dreadful as winter in North Alabama can be. But the officials of the Bowl and the sponsors and the people of Birmingham went to extravagant lengths to be gracious, to entertain our fans and make them feel warm and welcome, in spite of our eye-rolling and pouting that we were too good to be there.

In the 12 seasons since that All-American Bowl, we've been to the Cotton Bowl, four Sugars, three Oranges and three Fiestas. Played for the national championship three times. Won 10 of the 12. Only one year, 1990, could you say we didn't go to a "major" bowl, and that year we beat Penn State in the Blockbuster Bowl and were entertained in one of the most luxurious stadiums in America.

Florida State lives in a world far removed from most of college football. But what they say about being lonely at the top is true. The only people who are going to support our programs are alumni and friends.

In that All-American Bowl in Birmingham we struggled early; then sophomore Sammie Smith started putting up good numbers, and we eventually pulled away. I remember that it was after dark and snowing when we got to the stadium for the game. About halftime, the snow turned to sleet. Hardly any locals braved the weather, and after that year the Bowl went out of business.

And I remember something else from that night in Birmingham, before the onset of The Dynasty and the nearly unbroken 12-year run of Major Bowls.

I remember we had great seats.