Reid Sigmon

Reid Sigmon is the executive director of the Super Bowl coming to Raymond James Stadium in Tampa next year.

He’s not much of an athlete and never was. But, he is a scholarly type and has successful experience in this business, and in Tampa, and even has a valedictory and honors in his academic pursuits. Moreover he seems to have this sort of thing, athletic event management, in the back of his clearly well-developed brain.

He also has some goals for this challenge ahead.

Fill RJS up for the Super Bowl itself. Have to do that. No matter what the prices (and they are likely to be record-setting), pack the place to beyond its limits.

Raising $8 million from the private sector to put the game on is more of a challenge, but Sigmon already has pledges in excess of $2 million.

He and his committee must find 6,000 volunteers to work the game and advance events. Dottie Berger McKinnon is the chairman named already, and she’s at work now. Got some signed up already. She’ll get the 6,000, and all the subs she wants.

See that all that goes off swimmingly from the git-go until the last snap and the stadium is swept clean and not a fan is left behind, plus all events, game-related, before and after game day.

Make sure there is no cold weather, no rain, no fog, just days and nights with which we have been blessed lately.

Do what we can to see that the game here is comparable to the one the New York Giants just won in Phoenix, and tell us the Buccaneers have a shot at a spot in it.

Sigmon, 33, said he’d try. Not all of the above are in his contract but, well, most are goals.

Might get his two brothers to help. One is a minister, the other studying to be one.

And, the well-raised, well-educated, Sigmon is, a high-level young man who tried three sports and was good enough at all of them to understand what it takes to win - guts, tenacity, and want-to, plus experience, and ambition for those involved.

Our guy in charge of the Super Bowl has headed them before, and was the No. 2 guy here the last time we had a shot. Michael Kelly ran it here and other places where Sigmon was No. 2 and learned. Kelly was his strong mentor.

Out of Hendersonville, N.C., a beautiful winter home of so many Floridians from hereabouts, as are the neighboring havens of Highlands and Cashiers, a beautiful part of the world, Sigmon went to Wake Forest for his college, on a high note at that. He was the valedictorian of his class at East Henderson High. Didn’t need a football scholarship, not this scholar. Got it another way.

At Wake, Sigmon went out for the football club, anyway. He made the traveling squad as a holder. After the Demon Deacons were hammered by Florida State, well, the coach chose to change the holder. It was during the North Carolina State game. Sigmon had been promoted to No.1 holder after the FSU beating. He made no mistakes against N.C. State and got the number one job at that critical position.

“I wanted to be on the team. I guess I found a way,” Sigmon said. I guess he did. He also found a way to graduate with high honors in Athletic Administration at Wake, to complete a Masters program at the University of Florida, where he finished his work honorably and moved out into the real world.

Now, after a practical doctorate from Professor Michael Kelly, here he is back in Tampa to make this Super Bowl ahead the best of those we have had here, one the NFL and the teams respect.

“You guys here in the Tampa area have a wonderful Super Bowl reputation,” said Sigmon. Keep it up and get on that permanent rotation if such a thing can ever be done.

Not likely in my time. But, hey, a fourth Super Bowl in our town, in our area — the Tampa-St.Petersburg-Wauchula Area, just ahead, landed by the strong Dick Beard committee?

As old friend Leon Denton, who went to most Super Bowls before he died, would have said, “Ain’t it a blessing?”

And he’d drink to it.