Heavy Hitters of Polk County

[E.T.]

Recently a group of the "Heavy Hitters" of Polk County met at the home of the owner of "Play It Again Sports". Sandy is already a strong booster and had Leavitt, Woolard, Heath, Selmon among others at this event.

The play of Grothe has really helped this push.

The few that bash USF's marketing do not have any idea of the work our group does with the limited budget.

One of my friends was at this event and was won over by Leavitt and Heath. Unfortunately, don't think he is ready for the committment of a Green Jacket donation. He's pronbably just getting one of my tickets. But the good news is that my tix are getting accounted for like never before. I truly BULLIeve that another group will become Green jacket donors in 2008.

More good news is that some are big basketball fans and I will be getting 4 season tickets for this coming season. And my hope is that these guys(some that are not football fans as much) will want better tix and become donors on their own also.

Go BULLS !!!  :GoBulls

P.S. Vicki, Ken may be attending the event you sent him an email regarding. He will be getting back to you.

Sandy Fortin, S & J Sports dba Play It Again Sports, Lakeland: Drawing on more than three decades of previous retail experience, Sandy Fortin opened his first Play It Again Sports store in 1994. Since then, Mr. Fortin has grown his current holdings to 25 stores. He is the largest franchisee in the national sports specialty chain and has been granted an exclusive license to open all new Play It Again Sports franchises in Florida.

[Knight_Dive]

Lakeland is and always will be a Gator Town.

[TheBullies]

And a place I do not care to visit. Ever.

[Triple B]

Lakeland is and always will be a Gator Town.

Tip for all posters: HAVE A POINT!

[bulls96go]

lakeland will be bull country soon as will mousetown...everybody loves a winner.

[TKBlue]

To say that Lakeland will ALWAYS be Gator Country is silly. Its physical location alone make the long (and perhaps medium) term future bright for the USF fan base in Lakeland. Win and the will come.

[KB]

Great to hear ET.

[Ruger7mmmag]

All it takes is for USF to grab some of those Dreadnaughts and for them to have great careers at USF and Lakeland will be converted as those people are much more likely to make the trip to Tampa than Gville to see their friends play and that stuff spreads like wildfire.

[LakeBull]

Since the plan is to have a Lakeland campus with fifteen thousand students it is doubtful that Lakeland will be fully devoted to UF.    Some of the Florida Southern people might also dispute the Gator country tag.    :

[CoolBull1]

My wife and I were there...it was a great event.  Heath and Leavitt brought a lot of exccitement to the podium and really did an awesome job.  A number of people in the room were Bull Gators...Polk County and the Gators are very good friends and it's tough to penetrate that and expect people to change life long thought processes.

Applause to Doug, Vicky, Eric, LeRoy and the rest for a great event though.  It's like any sales process...it takes a number of touches to get people to buy.