By Bill Bunker

03/2004

This is the eighth in a multi-part series on the history of Seminole Boosters, Inc., written by former FSU Sports Information Director Bill Bunker.

Florida State charges into the Atlantic Coast Conference as the University Center gains momentum

Early in 1990, FSU President Bernie Sliger traveled to Marco Island to deliver a speech before a national gathering of college athletic directors. He doesn't remember much about his speech, but he vividly recalls a conversation afterward that would change not only the course of Florida State University athletics, but the face of college football as well.

"There was a guy there named (John) Swofford, who was then athletic director at North Carolina and is now the commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference," Sliger said. "After my speech, he asked me, 'Why don't you apply to the Atlantic Coast Conference?' I said I didn't think we had any chance. I heard it was 33 years since anybody had been admitted. He said, 'Well, why don't you put in anyway?'

"If I hadn't been at that conference, I don't think we'd have ever applied to the ACC. But, we applied, and things took off from there."

Just how FSU decided to join the ACC presents a vivid illustration of Sliger's management style. "It was as fine a process of reaching a decision that I've ever been involved with or even observed. I credit that to the way Bernie set it up and approached it," said FSU Professor of Finance Robert G. Turner, who headed up a committee to evaluate the finances of conference membership.

Poised to enter the final decade of the 20th century, Florida State offered a prize to any conference lucky enough to entice the Seminoles to join. Bobby Bowden's football team had just completed the third of what would eventually stretch to 14 ten-win seasons and had decimated Nebraska, 41-17, in the Fiesta Bowl. Pat Kennedy had led the basketball team to two straight NCAA tournament berths and Mike Martin had won seven consecutive Metro Conference baseball titles and was a perennial visitor to the College World Series.

Doak Campbell Stadium seated 60,519, but expansions were on the way as part of the University Center which was in the late planning stages.

"It was a very exciting time for us," said Andy Miller, president of Seminole Boosters, Inc. "If you go back 20 years before that, people said Florida State lacks tradition, facilities, conference affiliation and money. Then something happened that was almost a miracle. We brought in Bobby Bowden, and he started winning big. People were talking about Florida State."

Starting in 1987 we started beating people regularly and became a hot commodity. All of a sudden we were one of the hottest independent programs in the country. Even Notre Dame was not at the same level. Like the homecoming queen who suddenly gets interested in a long-rejected suitor when a rival appears, the Southeastern Conference quickly came courting when the ACC's flirtation with the Seminoles became known. For years, FSU had sought membership in the SEC, and it now seemed only natural that the school would join its league of dreams. Many connected with Florida State football felt strongly that the school's destiny lay in that direction. One of those was Miller. "I think there were a lot of real football boosters that really questioned us going in the ACC. They thought the SEC was exactly where we needed to be, and, quite frankly, I was one of them," he said. "We had this intention of building more seats in the stadium. There were the typical arguments: The SEC is a better football conference, their fans are more passionate, they travel well and they are closer to us. I thought they were a better fit for FSU."

"The rumor out there was that Bernie wanted to go in the SEC," said Turner, an Athletic Committee member. "I fundamentally believe that many, if not most of our alumni wanted the same thing. Bernie could have had anything he wanted. If he said let's join the SEC, we would have joined the SEC."

But, as FSU grad and ESPN football analyst Lee Corso would say, "Not so fast, my friend!" President Sliger had other ideas.

A number of committees were formed, including several within the athletic department, as well as groups of alumni and Boosters. These committees analyzed academic, athletic, financial and relationship issues to determine which conference association would be best for FSU.

While the SEC's football prominence and relative proximity to Tallahassee figured strongly, several disturbing aspects emerged. With the dissolution of the Southwest Conference, Arkansas had joined the SEC, and the league needed another member to bring the membership total to 12 so that a championship game could be played. This would require divisional play, and it seemed likely FSU would be placed in the western division, a prospect many found unappealing.

Academically, the ACC appeared to have a definite edge. Also, the reputation and image of the member schools appealed to FSU. With only nine members, ACC membership not only allowed home and home competition in all sports, but enabled the Seminoles to continue rivalries with Florida and Miami along with national foes such as Notre Dame.

Then, there was the position relative to other members that Florida State would assume in joining. As one Booster who was a member of the selection committee put the question, "Should we join a conference where we would be considered number two in our own state, or one where we would be on top in football from the beginning?"

Financial comparisons may have ultimately decided the issue. Turner's finance committee was small in size and specific in nature.

"Bernie had a number of committees advising him, many of which didn't know the others existed," he said. "He made me chair of a very small committee which looked at one thing and that was the finances of three options. One option was staying independent, two was going in the SEC and three was going in the ACC.

"But he wanted to take a very thorough look at all the options, one of which would be athletic, another academic and another would be where we stand in the lineup of consideration in the various options. My role in it was totally financial. We did our analysis and submitted our report. The results were that we would surely be better off in the SEC than staying independent and better off in the ACC than the SEC. The ACC basketball tournament with its contract with the national media tipped the financial scales in favor of the ACC."

As the process developed, the ACC gained while the SEC waned. in the end, the recommendations to Sliger were overwhelmingly in favor of joining the ACC.

With all reports in, Sliger made his decision. "I was leaning toward the academics in the ACC, and the amount of money we were going to get was more. In the ACC we were all in one group, whereas in the SEC we would have been in two groups and we very likely would have been in the western division. That didn't sound so good to me," he said.

"I think it's worked out very well. In fact I think most people who wanted us to go into the SEC think it was probably a good idea."

FSU joined the ACC as a playing member, July 1, 1991. That year, the Seminoles became one of only two programs in NCAA Division I history to send teams to a major bowl game (Cotton), the "Sweet Sixteen" round of the NCAA basketball tournament and the College World Series in the same year. In 1992, FSU's football team contended for its first ACC championship, and quickly became a dominant force, winning nine straight titles.

Conference membership opened new territories for Seminole Boosters, Inc., according to Miller.

"The ACC really opened up the Atlanta market to us. We have some strong booster activities up in the Carolinas and up the northern seaboard, so it really opened up all of that to us. A lot of clubs formed, and we were able to involve those people as well," he said.

"In order to get people more involved in the boosters you want to take the program to them. It was very difficult when we were independent and every year had a new schedule. You might be playing in Pittsburgh, or on the west coast. It was exciting in one respect, but you don't have any continuity to build rivalries. Once we joined the conference we had a situation where we could start building rivalries and relationships with people in areas that stretched all the way from Miami up to Maryland and Washington, DC. These people knew they would have Florida State coming to their area a few times every year, and so, it gave them a greater stake, more involvement."

The Boosters forged ahead with other programs during the early 90s. Chairman Tommy Williams implemented the Chairman's Challenge in 1990, a program designed to get members of the national Booster Board more involved in fund raising. The organization's 16,000 members and $6.1 million in revenues set new records which would fall annually during the remainder of the decade.

Groundbreaking ceremonies for the university Center were held in 1991 under the chairmanship of Frank Fain, marking significant progress in the Boosters' biggest project to date, one that presented constant challenges to those involved.

As vice president for University Advancement and chairmen of the University Center Building Committee, Jim Pitts played a major role in moving the project along.

"I was the university's point person dealing with the Board of Regents, dealing with the financial plan, with signing off on various contracts and that type of thing," he said.

"The Board of regents would release money depending on the plans and draw schedule for money, but since there was so much state money and state space involved, they were sort of the project's fiscal managers/oversight managers.

"The chancellor's office had to sign off on contracts and disbursement of funds.

"It was a significant jigsaw puzzle because we had a lot of different types of money. We had Booster bond financing for some of the Booster space, we added seats to the stadium at the same time, so there was some ticket revenue that was pledged as a backup. There were suite revenues pledged. We had some student fee money that was going in, because the student government had decided it was desirable to have certain student services spaces. Then we had the traditional allocation for academic and administrative space. Because we had various pots of money with various colors on them, with various restrictions on them, we had to be very creative in the way we moved forward with construction draws. The Center was built in several phases and as we moved from one phase to the next, what was to be included in the bidding process changed."

On a related front, in 1991, the Boosters began buying land west of the stadium, an important component of the University Center, Miller said.

"One thing we didn't want to do was build a hundred million dollar project on a postage stamp. We needed property to expand our parking lots and that kind of thing," he explained.

"The land acquisition was a very, very complicated proposition. Behind the west stands we had the Maples (Concrete) Company, but we also had two or three churches, we had multiple owners, we had little pockets of property ownership that must have had 25 owners. We had to quietly move through that to buy all that land in order to do what we were doing. You can imagine that one holdout could make a fortune, but we were able to buy all of that land very reasonably. As I look back and think of what we paid for all of that, that was some of the best buys we ever made."

In 1992 under Chairman Dennis Boyle, Seminole Boosters, Inc. celebrated its 40th Anniversary and pointed with pride to the $65 million raised in support of FSU athletics, the seven expansions of Campbell Stadium and other successful projects. Commemorative coins were presented to past chairmen in a ceremony at Moore Athletic Center.

While most of the plans for University Center were complete, at least in concept, the south end zone remained vacant except for a gift shop and food court. In New York City prior to the 1993 Kickoff Classic, Miller had lunch with Booster Chairman Doug Mannheimer and future chairmen Carl Domino (1995) and Joe Camps (1997).

"We had lunch at the Harvard Club, an old city club that has been in Manhattan for years," Miller said. "I'll never forget, it had pictures of all these Harvard alumni presidents on the wall. While we were having lunch, we said we ought to build ourselves on of these. this is what we need. We've got a great hospitality school, and we should have a club. We were looking for an idea to build out that building on the south end, so we said, let's build a University Club."

An association with FSU's School of Business soon followed, as did an arrangement with the Club Corporation of America (CCA), which helped finance construction and outfitting of the facility.

"The Boosters put almost four million dollars into that building, but it's paying for itself," Miller said. "It's not a big money maker, but I hear people ask, 'Where would we be without a University Club?' It brings the town to the gown. People from all around town use it, and they get a chance to meet people from FSU. It's a real plus for the university. We've been able to make money on it because it's become sort of a sky box for us during football games. It all originated on the trip to New York."

Incidentally, after defeating Kansas, 42-0, in the 1993 Kickoff Classic, Florida State went on to win its first national championship. In 1994, Lawton Langford became the first second generation chairman of Seminole Boosters, Inc., following his father, George, who held the post three times. In that year, Seminole Boosters, Inc. became the largest organization of its type in the nation with 19,000 members, $7.6 million annual contributions and total revenues of more than $16 million. With an average attendance of 70,635, FSU finished in the nation's Top Ten in that category for the first time, passing Alabama and Nebraska to get there.

In 1995, Bowden's 20th as FSU's head football coach, the Seminoles lost their first ACC game, but finished 10-2, their ninth straight ten-win season.

The remainder of the 20th Century would prove equally exciting and rewarding.

Next: The Dynasty Campaign brings long-awaited athletic facility improvements to FSU.