Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 18, 1993 TAG: 9302180013
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
SALEM MAKES THE RIGHT MOVES TO LURE SPORTS EVENTS
Amos Alonzo Stagg was the coach who brought the man in motion and the end-around play to football.In securing the bowl game named for the legendary coach, who died in 1965, Salem put Stagg's innovations to use. The city's bid to have the NCAA move the Division III championship game from Bradenton, Fla., to the Roanoke Valley for three years wasn't a trick play, however.
Salem's success is a story of aggressiveness, a product of promotion. There's a lesson to be learned from this. You can't win if you don't try to compete.
The advent of the Stagg Bowl on Southwest Virginia soil is more proof that the Roanoke Valley has some potential as a sports location. Maybe sports can't return all of the jobs lost recently, but the games people play - and pay to watch - could be a lucrative lure.
In this metropolitan area that too often doesn't think like one, Roanoke city and county should go to school on Salem's bowl victory. Because of the decrepit condition of Victory Stadium, Roanoke could not have wooed the NCAA committee successfully. Then, it probably would not have tried.
Roanoke councilman Delvis "Mac" McCadden is trying push a sports presence in the Roanoke Valley, but he isn't getting much help. McCadden is working to keep a sad-sack pro hockey franchise here, with the correct notion that keeping a team that wants to leave town - no matter how badly it is managed - is better than having no team at all.
Salem's Stagg Bowl future isn't lost on McCadden, who said getting more of the same is a matter of running a two-point conversion in the Star City.
"First, you have to go out and bid on events," McCadden said. "You have to make it a priority. Second, you have to have the facility to sell. The impact of the Stagg Bowl will be felt not just in Salem, but in the whole Roanoke Valley. People have to wake up to what's possible, if we try."
Salem, led by the inquiring mind of civic center manager Carey Harveycutter, has taken the initiative for the valley's sports psyche. The civic center put in a creative bid for the Big South Conference basketball tournament last year. If the athletic directors and not the presidents had voted, Salem - and not Charleston, S.C. - would have been the site for next month's tournament.
Salem regularly seeks - and gets - Virginia High School League events, like the state wrestling tournament at the civic center this weekend. The Old Dominion Athletic Conference plays its 14th basketball tournament in Salem next week, wrapped among high school hoops. The year-old Moyer softball complex already has been the site of a national tournament.
For the Stagg Bowl, Salem beat Bradenton's gulf beaches and warm breezes with more than hot air. Salem didn't just get the game because it talked about it. Harveycutter does his homework and is given freedom by city management to be aggressive in promoting Salem's sports facilities.
The Roanoke Valley can't compete with Richmond's metropolitan might. However, Lynchburg's aggressive marketing campaign to become a sports host is an idea that can produce capital. Maybe the Hill City has lost the Virginia high school coaches' clinic, but it gained a Tour du Pont stop.
Lynchburg likely will get an NBA exhibition game for a third straight year. Roanoke needs a sports promotion guru to lobby for similar events at its 10,000 seat arena.
You win some, you lose some. The idea, as Salem shows regularly, is at least to try.
The bowl may be a Division III game, but it is a national championship. The city of Roanoke and Roanoke County should offer to help promote the game because this Stagg party will be spread across the valley.
There is no question, however, that in our sports galaxy, Salem is really the Star City.