Play It, And They Will Come

Posted Apr 1, 2008 by Aaron Knox

Updated Apr 3, 2008 at 12:40 PM

If you happened to drive by the Baseball Grounds of Jacksonville on April 3, 2007, it would have been easy to assume the Red Sox and Yankees had decided to return to the Sunshine State to play a final spring exhibition.

There was no way an overflow crowd of 12,280 fans would turn out for a college baseball game, right? Wrong. In this case, it wasn’t some diamond dream floating around in Ray Kinsella’s head. The neutral-site game between Florida State and Florida drew the largest crowd for a college game in Florida’s history.

So, recognizing a home run when they see one, the powers-that-be scheduled a rematch in Jacksonville tonight between the two rivals.

Good call. My only question is: Why didn’t somebody think of this sooner?

Jacksonville proved the perfect host, but I’d like to see an annual FSU-UF neutral-site game each year at different venues around the state. Make it one of the most-publicized games of the season.

Maybe Legends Field – oops, Steinbrenner Field – in Tampa could serve as host one year, then Disney’s Wide World of Sports in Orlando the next. To give fans in South Florida a shorter drive, the game could be played at the Cardinals’ spring home in Jupiter or in Fort Lauderdale.

College baseball is like the redheaded stepchild of the football and men’s basketball programs at most schools, but obviously there are ample FSU and UF fans around to pack a stadium with as many fans at most regular-season games at The Trop.

The schools play three times this season, once in Gainesville (UF won 6-1 on March 18), once in Tallahassee (April 15) and tonight in Jacksonville. Another idea could be to add another regular-season game between the schools each year and hold it at a rotating neutral-site venue, and then keep the annual showdown in Jacksonville.

Anyway, that’s my two cents. What do you think? Was last year’s game a one-hit wonder or do you think the game could draw 10,000-plus annually?