The Outback Bowl: Another successful Tampa sports project

Posted Jun 7, 2010 by Tom McEwen

Updated Jun 7, 2010 at 01:11 AM

Jim McVay, master of the understatement and Executive Director of the Outback Bowl said, “By the way, our game this year will move to New Year’s afternoon, instead of the morning, to a 1:PM kickoff, and on ABC instead of ESPN.”

Those are significant changes, and good ones too for the Outback Bowl moving to prime time into the network. But that is the way of McVay, who never gets very excited about anything or pretends not be. McVay (above) has been the guiding light of the Outback Bowl since he became its director in the third game played here as the old Hall of Fame Bowl.

These years it has thrived and grown and now is among the top six bowl games in America. Not bad for an event that began as a high school North versus South All-Star Game of little interest to anyone, though early on McVay did persuade McDonald’s Ray Kroc to get involved through Fritz Casper in Tampa.

Now, the game has emerged as one of a half-dozen postseason major college extravaganzas in the country after the Outback organization took over as its major sponsor, as they did the major golf tournament in our area. The Outback is now, as mentioned, among the top bowls in America. It can’t get any bigger now with the day kickoff and matching the third-finishing colleges in the Big Ten and the Southeastern Conference.

“We have come a long way,” said McVay standing along side his dad, John, former New York Giants Head Coach, at the Outback Summer Splash at Tom Dempsey’s Saddlebrook Resort admidst the explosion of growth in north Hillsborough and south Pasco county. Both arteries there, I-4 and Bruce B. Downs, were bumper to bumper with traffic Saturday night. It seemed as if the state of Minnesota was moving to Florida. Of course, major construction is part of that problem now.

At the Outback dinner, we sat with Jerri and Steve Spurrier, now head football coach at the University of South Carolina, where they and their family are more than satisfied.

However, Jerri Spurrier made it clear that “we never had any better times when Steve was head coaching the Tampa Bay Bandits.”

Steve picked up on that by saying “I will never, ever forget when you all down here suggested John Bassett come talk to me at Duke University for the head coaching job.

“He came the next day, offered me the job, and I took it. The Bandits in those times, when McVay here was our General Manager, were wonderful.” Spurrier said his team at South Carolina will be fine, but perhaps even better in the years ahead. Spurrier is fit as ever, had shot an 80 at Tampa Avila that afternoon, with a double bogey for an 80 on the final hole. 

“We are going to be all right at South Carolina. We know we must play Florida, Georgia, Tennessee each year and we will love doing it. We sell out all of the games. Our fans are wonderful, as they were at Florida,” said Spurrier.

“No, I don’t need to move anymore, I think our future is good, we love where we are and I get to play Augusta National once a year,” he said.

Others at the Outback dinner commanding special attention was former Buccaneer coach Jon Gruden, now on ESPN as an analyst living in Tampa still where he coaches his son’s football team; his wife Cindi, Illinois Head Coach Ron Zook, and Outback boss Chris Sullivan, who said his organization could not be happier than it is with the Outback Bowl Game and they have no plans to back away. 

The Outback’s Summer Splash and its bowl game continue to be a big successful sporting event in Tampa, in no small way because of McVay, Saddlebrook, and the Outbackers.