USF scheduling snafu has ripple effect

By Darrell Laurant  |   Thursday, February 28, 2008  |  Comments( 0 )

South Florida Bulls
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The University of South Florida was all set to play a regular-season-ending Thursday night football home game with Rutgers at Raymond James Stadium on Dec. 4, to be televised nationally on ESPN.

The problem was, the Tampa Sports Authority found out it had won its bid to host the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game on Dec. 6. Because the two ACC finalists will need practice time, those two dates became incompatible. South Florida rescheduled its Rutgers game to Nov. 15, but hard feelings remained.

This week, according to the Tampa Tribune, the Tampa Sports Authority offered USF preferential scheduling -- a right of first refusal to dates not used by the stadium's primary tenant, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers -- in return for a 15-year extension to the school's present lease.

The problem, from South Florida's point of view, is that the school had talked about building an on-campus stadium sometime in the next decade. Yet USF athletic director Doug Woolard said of the TSA offer: "We're certainly considering it."

The current USF deal with the stadium authority runs through December of 2011.

Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio was one of the primary architects of a possible compromise.
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