Visiting Orlando and the Amway Center

It has been quite a few years since I have spent any time in the city of Orlando. I have passed through a couple of times going somewhere else, but haven't really spent time in the city since 1999.

This evening I am at the brand new Amway Center, home of the NBA's Orlando Magic. The building holds 20,000 for a Magic game (whenever that may be) but will probably see no more than 6,000 tomorrow night when the Hatters face No. 9 Florida.

Part of the reason for the expected small crowd is that it will be on a Monday night, in a city with 10,000 other things available to do, and will be televised by Sun Sports.

The crowd will also be limited, believe it or not, by the Orlando Magic. You see, even though the Amway Center is a city owned facility, the Magic control virtually every aspect of operation and every avenue of profit.

None of the hundreds of suites in this facility are available for use tomorrow night. Those all belong to the Magic and are leased to their customers for use at any event held in the facility. That probably trims the available capacity of the facility in half.

Want to use the scoreboard for a game, you have to rent it, and the people who run it, from the Magic. Along with the scoreboard, which is an all-computer controlled board, are the ribbon boards circling the inside of the facility. The Magic take 50% of any ads you want to run, while the city takes another 25%.

Want to do any of the hundreds of other things that go into hosting an event, you have to rent those from the Magic as well.

Add to that the fact that no one who uses the building has the right to sell sponsorships to companies in direct competition with Magic sponsors, and all Magic sponsors get included in anything that is done, and your chance to make a dime, is severely hampered.

Without a doubt, this is a beautiful facility, but it will likely never host an NCAA Regional Tournament, or any conference tournament or event. You'll probably never see a WWE event in the building, not will you likely see many concerts or other events.

That is truly a shame, but that is the deal the city of Orlando cut with the Magic to keep the NBA in town. If the lockout had continued and cancelled the entire season, there is a good chance that tomorrow's Steson-Florida game would have not only been the only basketball game in the building this year, it likely would have been the only event of any kind.

That is truly a shame.

It's a whole new ball game for the Hatters

Today the Stetson men's basketball team left the friendly confines of the Edmunds Center for their first road trip of the year.

Big deal you might say. College teams go on the road all the time.

True enough. Travel is a major part of being involved with college athletics. I have seen more hotel rooms over the years than I can even think about.

What makes this trip different, at least for me, is that everything is new. It is not only new for me, it is also new for members of the Stetson coaching staff and several members of the Hatters team.

The first trip of any season is usually the strangest because no one has yet settled into a routine. This trip is different because no one knows what the routine will be.

For instance, the first thing we all had to figure out was where to sit on the bus.

Seems like a small thing, but the Hatters have a coaching staff that is working together under Casey Alexander for the first time, and he is a first time head coach. The seating arrangements worked themselves out pretty quickly, as they usually do, with coaches and staff in the front, players in the back.

The trip north to Tallahassee was relatively short, but we went a different way than I would have expected. We traveled north on Interstate 95 to I-10 and then west to the state capital. My first few trips back and forth from Troy, Ala., to DeLand has been down I-75.

Anyway, we got in a movie on the ride ("Wedding Crashers") and made pretty good time.

Once we got to the hotel, Casey pulled all of the players together to go over some simple ground rules. Most of the things he told them were things you would never normally think of, but this is new for everyone.

"It is amazing the small things about travel that you don’t think about until you are doing it for the first time with a new group," Alexander said. "You have to talk about how to take care of the bus, and take care of the hotel, and how to behave when you eat. Those are things you tend to take for granted, but they are all important because they tend to tell people what you want your program to look like."

So, after the short meeting, we ventured out for dinner at the Olive Garden across from our Courtyard by Marriott hotel. The players all handled dinner fine and all is well.

While I knocked out a preview of tomorrow night's game, as well as editing a recap of the Crew teams' adventure to Augusta over the weekend, the team was getting together to watch some film of tomorrow night's foe, Florida A&M.

Tomorrow will be breakfast, another scouting session and a shoot around in the morning before the teams spends the afternoon relaxing before the game.

On Tuesday, the focus will turn to the second game of the road trip, Florida State.