Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 7, 1994 TAG: 9412070119
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
That's good news.
The NCAA Division III Football Committee could announce as early as today a recommendation to extend the original three-year contract for the game at Salem Stadium.
``Everything looks very positive,'' said Wayne Burrow, the NCAA assistant director of championships who oversees the Stagg Bowl. ``We'd certainly like to announce we'll add the 1996 game while we're here this week.''
That's what $55,972 in 1993 ticket sales and spacious new press boxes can deliver.
The committee met Tuesday night at a Roanoke hotel to discuss renewal of a contract scheduled to run through next season. And the NCAA and Salem have the perfect forum for revealing the extension at tonight's Gagliardi Trophy dinner, with the Roanoke Valley Sports Club as host.
Salem certainly wants the game to stay. Carey Harveycutter, the Stagg Bowl chairman and Salem Civic Center manager, said the city has asked the NCAA to discuss an extension. It doesn't hurt that the city the Old Dominion Athletic Conference and Roanoke College call home has further embraced Division III athletics by successfully bidding for NCAA women's softball, baseball and men's basketball championships, in addition to the Stagg Bowl.
The word is discussions have centered on a one-year, rollover deal that would allow the NCAA to come to the Roanoke Valley in December and annually announce the next two Stagg Bowls will be played at Salem Stadium.
The 22nd Stagg Bowl - Salem's second - will be played at noon Saturday, when unbeaten Albion faces 11-1 Washington & Jefferson. Each is seeking its first NCAA team title in any sport, and by Tuesday each already had sold its initial ticket allotment. Salem is seeking a second consecutive Stagg sellout, and that looks to be a realistic expectation.
Even before tickets went on sale at the finalists' campuses Monday, Salem had sold more Stagg seats in two years than the previous host, Bradenton, Fla., had sold in three Decembers. That number was 10,944. In the final three years (1987-89) of a return to the game's original site - Phenix City, Ala. - sales were 10,802.
Salem's sellout crowd of 7,304 last year in brutal weather could have been larger, but standing-room tickets were not sold. It already may have been the second-largest crowd in Stagg history, behind the estimated 9,000 who crossed the border into Phenix City to watch West Georgia win the 1982 NCAA title over Augustana
Not only did the NCAA receive its $25,000 guarantee from the contract with Salem, after Salem retained the next $10,000 in receipts, the NCAA received an additional $2,438.94 in its 60 percent split of receipts after expenses. Similar terms are likely in any extension of the deal.
The NCAA committee also was thrilled with the rest of Salem's Stagg party and the prospects for a repeat this week after the teams arrive Thursday. The local organizing committee also has sold more corporate sponsorships than last year.
``The shame was that the people who only arrived here Saturday for the game last year, they missed out on the warmness - that's a bad word, good description - of the whole community,'' said Bill Manlove, coach at Delaware Valley and the Division III football committee chairman. ``When I looked up in the stands and saw them packed, especially in that weather, that told us something.''
What it told the NCAA was the Stagg Bowl had located a different kind of warmth than it had experienced in Florida. It was a geography lesson. Salem's closer proximity to more of Division III football certainly has helped Salem draw a crowd.
So, it seems the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl will be played in Salem for at least two more years. And if it stayed longer than that, it wouldn't be staggering, either.
by CNB