How about if Gator fans don’t sell out Amway Center, Mike Bianchi should leave?
Mark, have you tried the Amway Center’s website? Maybe there are tickets left without getting the jacked up Stubhub tickets.
Oliver Barry, CRS, GRI
Bob Parks Realty, LLC
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From: gatornews@googlegroups.com [mailto:gatornews@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Bowers
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2014 6:45 PM
To: gatornews@googlegroups.com
Subject: [gatornews] I have my tickets
If Gator fans don't sell out Amway Center for NCAA Tournament, Billy Donovan should leave
SPORTS COMMENTARY
9:49 p.m. EDT, March 16, 2014
As Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer announced that the No. 1-ranked Florida Gators would begin their quest for a national championship right here in Central Florida, the raucous standing-room only crowd at the Selection Sunday VIP watch party in downtown Orlando began Gator chomping and chanting, hooting and hollering.
Now the question is will the Amway Center be standing-room only and filled with a deafening, delirious bunch of rowdy reptiles on Thursday when the Gators open up March Madnessagainst the winner of the Albany-Mount St. Mary's play-in game?
This should not even be a question. Every seat in the Amway Center should be packed Thursday for the opening round and again Saturday when the Gators – barring an historic upset – will take on the winner of the Pitt-Colorado game. If it's not, the iconic Billy Donovan should leave Florida for a fan base that appreciates the amazing job he's done in building an elite basketball program where nobody thought it was possible.
Orlando is smack, dab, in the middle of Florida, where the Gators have more fans and more alumni than any other school in the state. It would be a travesty if every seat in the Amway Center isn't sold when one of biggest sporting events in the country comes to Orlando later this week.
"I'm guaranteeing a sell-out," said a confident Dyer, an avid Gator fan and UF Law School grad.
"It's definitely going to be a sellout, no question," Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs said. "… This is theFlorida Gators."
Yes, but Florida Gator fans aren't quite as rabid as they used to be. We've certainly seen evidence of this in football, where the Gators rarely pack the Swamp anymore after a two-decade-long streak of 137 straight sellouts ended in 2011. Who will ever forget two years ago when the Gators won 11 games and were invited to the Sugar Bowl, where they sold less than half of their allotment of tickets and were dwarfed by the massive amount of Louisville fans who showed up in New Orleans.
As for basketball, I've been to plenty of NCAATournaments where UF's fan contingent is miniscule when compared to other elite basketball schools. But now there can be no excuses.
If ever there was a reason for Florida fans to jump on the basketball bandwagon, it's now. Their football team is coming off a 4-8 season and there's no reason to believe Will Muschamp's Gators will be contending for a championship anytime soon. What makes it even more painful for Florida fans is that Florida State just won the national championship in football and will likely be favored to win it again next year.
A basketball national championship — a third in nine years — would make Donovan's Gators the preeminent basketball program in the country over the last decade. If that's not a reason for loud, proud Gator fans to pack the Amway Center, I don't know what is.
"Can you imagine how incredible it would be for this state if Florida State won the football national championship and the Florida won the basketball national championship," Jacobs said.
And it could easily happen. This Florida team seems like it's on a mission. The Gators are riding a school-record 26-game winning. They became the first SEC team in history to ever finish the regular season with a perfect 18-0 record. They followed it up Sunday by winning the SEC Tournament Championship with a third victory overKentucky this season.
And not only is this team winning, but it's a team Florida fans can relate to because they've watched the four senior starters — Patric Young, Scottie Wilbekin, Casey Prather and Will Yeguete — grow up right before their very eyes. In this day and age when so many college programs have become transient, one-and-done NBA factories, it's refreshing to see a real team built around a bunch of seniors.
When UF fans began their chant — "It's great to be a Florida Gator!" — these guys actually agree.
"When you invest four years in a place like these guys have, it means something to them," Donovan says.
"We're a bunch of guys who stuck around, grew up together and love each other," Florida center Patric Young told me a few days ago. "We're not just playing for ourselves."
No, they are playing for their teammates, their coach and, yes, their school
And they deserve to play in front of a packed house at the Amway Center this week.
Anything less would be an embarrassment.
mbianchi@tribune.com. Follow him on Twitter at BianchiWrites. Listen to his radio show every weekday from 6 to 9 a.m. on 740-AM.
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