ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, January 7, 1997 TAG: 9701070052
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: Reporter's Notebook
SOURCE: CHRISTINA NUCKOLS
If you watched the Orange Bowl on the tube last week, or even if you made it to Miami but stayed in your seat the whole time, you missed out on some colorful people behind the scenes.
Even though I can never get enough of the Hokey Pokey, I have to give Byron Hoffman of Miami credit for the best music of the evening. He was the guy playing "Amazing Grace" on a bagpipe in front of one of the concession stands.
Hoffman never took a breather while I was around, but his buddy Margaret Watson explained that they were raising money through popcorn sales for their annual Southeast Florida Scottish Festival in March.
Watson is experienced at sizing up crowds from her fund-raising stints at the stadium. She said the Orange Bowl fans cheered more than the usual crowd that shows up at the Pro Players Stadium for the Miami Dolphins. But, she added with a disapproving shake of her head, Virginians and Nebraskans were spending less money on snacks.
No joke: no booze
One reason Hokies and 'Huskers were going light on refreshments was that the Orange Bowl committee decided to ban alcohol from the stadium for the game. Fans weren't exactly pleased about that policy, particularly because it wasn't publicized. No one knew before they got inside the stadium that they'd be spending most of New Year's Eve without booze.
Umbrellas were another no-no, although that rule wasn't special to the Orange Bowl. It was adopted partly because umbrellas can obstruct others' view of the game and partly because drunken people tend to gig each other when they get upset. The two rules together resulted in a bunch of soggy, sober people when it began to rain at the beginning of the fourth quarter.
The only people who weren't grumbling were the stadium staff in charge of keeping order in the stands. They said it was the best-behaved crowd they'd ever seen.
Did you say commercial?
One thing fans who traveled to the Orange Bowl didn't miss was the commercials.
Advertisements for movies and car dealerships were played on the scoreboard during time-outs. Bacardi had its logo plastered everywhere during the half-time show. And the Blockbuster blimp loomed overhead for the duration of the game.
Bruce Coleman and his friends, all members of the Hokie Club in Greensboro, N.C., got right into the spirit of the evening by wearing Orange Bowl hats made out of FedEx envelopes.
A friend who works at FedEx, which sponsored the game, drew the Orange Bowl logo on the envelopes for them.
Coleman said he wasn't offended by the commercialism of the event.
"In fact, I work for the company that's got the big sign up there," he said, pointing to the Marlboro billboard on top of the scoreboard.
How to get lost
Those who rented cars during their stay in Miami probably got to see more of the city than they wanted.
It's hard to get lost in Miami Beach, which is such a narrow peninsula that there are only three main roads running north and south. But Miami itself is a different story. I was given a pamphlet entitled "Learning Your Way Around Miami." It turned out to be an essay on how hard it was to find your way rather than a how-to guide. After reading it, I knew exactly where I'd get lost, but had no idea how to prevent that from happening.
Because lost tourists have a tendency to become dead tourists, Miami officials decided to paint little orange suns on highway signs to indicate which routes are safe. I was more than halfway through my stay in the city before someone explained this to me.
Anyway, it didn't help much. Almost every sign in Miami has a sun on it, probably painted on them by business owners trying to lure tourists past their stores.
Because roughly three quarters of the signs had these mysterious emblems, I just assumed they were for people trying to get to the beach. Florida is a peninsula, so most roads lead to some beach somewhere, right?
Christina Nuckols covered the Orange Bowl festivities for The Roanoke Times. When not in Miami, she covers Roanoke County government for the newspaper.
LENGTH: Medium: 84 linesby CNB