Weekend musings: Mickey Andrews' pillar, tailgate party and Nawlins next

The Seminoles are won and oh!

Woke up this morning looking forward to reading the opinions of our posters about what they experienced this past weekend, including what they saw on Bobby Bowden Field. Reading is always more fun after a win.

I’ve already posted my thoughts about the game, so I’ll focus on the weekend experience.

It felt like there was more excitement in the community about this season than I’ve felt in recent years, whether at the Tallahassee Quarterback Club’s Tuesday event featuring Mike Norvell or Thursday’s FSU soccer game, a 1-1 tie against Auburn.

Quite a few Seminoles from all around the nation ventured into College Town on Friday Night, in spite of early rain, for the Osceola’s Pregame Show and member mixer. Good to see new and old friends talking football and getting fired up for the home opener. There were folks from Miami, Jacksonville, Melbourne, Panama City, Tallahassee, Boston, New Jersey and Colorado. People enjoyed having their pictures made with the cheerleaders and listening to Marching Chiefs and featured bands.

Despite inclement weather on Saturday, most Seminoles did not let it rain on their parade. What’s a 90-minute lightning delay after a nine-month wait for football?

Most huddled up in a dry spot and waited it out.

Dunlap Champions Club members gathered on the east side of the Champions Club fourth floor, where the Mickey Andrews Pillar of Champions would be dedicated.

A couple of hundred people, including Andrews’ family, gathered to honor the Broyles Award’s National Assistant Coach of the Year in 1996.

Andrews gave a short talk about how football has changed since the days he played wide receiver and defensive back at the University of Alabama. Andrews cited reduction in practice time, the transfer portal and NIL as the major differences. One of the first questions was to name his favorite player.

“At which position,” he asked dryly, noting former defensive lineman Corey Simon was in attendance. Andrews went on to note that Deion Sanders was special based on his work ethic, which is what enabled him to perform at the level he was able.

The next question was about the greatest hit ever. Andrews was prepared for that question, reaching into a shopping bag and extracting that framed photo of a Miami receiver floating horizontally in midair after a head-on collision with Marvin Jones.

Andrews said his second most-memorable hit, not surprisingly, also involved a Miami receiver knocked horizontal by defensive back Stanford Samuels. You may remember that one too. Andrews reminded the crowd the hit came on a rainy day. “Stanford knocked him dry,” Andrews said. “When we watched the replay in slow motion, you could see all the rain and sweat being knocked right off that boy. Stanford knocked him dry.”

Andrews enjoyed spending time with adoring fans, family and friends who attended the presentation, including NFL great Walter Jones.

The Pillar of Champions has become a popular event for club seat ticket holders. Here’s some background. When the club was built, there was a series of 14 support columns in the fourth-floor ballroom and bar area that are essential to supporting the sixth floor. The columns could not be minimized so rather than hide the, FSU chose to celebrate them with column wraps featuring football players or coaches who were either national players of the year or two-time consensus all Americans.

These heroic images of FSU’s legends, one on each side of the column, includes the name of a donor who made a six-figure gift to honor that player or coach on that pillar. Scott Wilson, a longtime Seminole fan and donor, was recognized along with Andrews for his gift.

Florida State honored a stunning 12 Hall of Fame inductees on Friday night and on the field Saturday evening, a class that included baseball outfielder James Ramsey, basketball guard Tim Pickett, football wide receivers E.G. Green and Marvin “Snoop” Minnis, golfer Brooks Koepka, soccer midfielder Amanda DaCosta and defender Toni Pressley, swimmer Emma Dutton, men's tennis player Jean-Yves Aubone, volleyball player Jekaterina Stepnova, and Moore Stone Award winners Lawton and Beth Langford.

The Hall of Fame normally inducts five or six Seminoles each year, but this was a much larger class as the Hall was unable to induct some of these recipients in previous years.

For 25 years, Club Corporation ran the University Center Club and provided the food and beverage for skyboxes. In 2016, when the Champions Club opened, Club Corp also handled the food and beverage within the club seat section.

The contract expired in 2021 and Legends took over for the 2022 season, so Saturday was quite literally our first taste.

I’ll share my experience in a moment, but I want yours too.

If you were in the Champions Club, a skybox or the new high-top seats in the South Endzone, please share your experience. Legends is in its second year of providing concessions for the grandstands, so if you sat in the main bowl, tell us about your experience there too.

Here's my experience: I found the entry into the Champions Club improved. I think it was smart to cue people from both sides of the entry gate, rather than one side. At my age, I love being carded, so the first time was fun. In fact, next time, I’m going to give them my fake ID, the one that says I just turned 21. After going through the banding and the ID checking, I was surprised when the bartender asked to see my ID again. I thought she was flirting, flattering an old man but she was serious. The repetitive ID checks seem like overkill to me and could be problematic on a busy gameday.

My wife, Alex, was not happy to learn Legends isn’t allowing you to charge your drinks to your membership accounts, so rather than charge her drinks to our account, she had to pay for her drinks each time she ordered one. While she was not happy about that new policy, I thought, “Oh, happy day!”

They say if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. I found the ice cream on the fourth floor – especially that key lime pie ice cream – delicious and I was happy to find a gluten free brownie for my wife too. Nice touch. However, I was disappointed in other offerings on the fourth floor, except for the hot dog. Who doesn’t love a dawg at the ball game? I was also very pleased to find a roast beef carving station with roasted potatoes and vegetables on the sixth floor Kearney Osceola Grill. I also found a salad bar and a roasted chicken option.

And I never take those spacious and clean club bathrooms for granted.

I did wonder about the juice-sized cups stacked next to the self-serve soft drink stations on the fourth floor – and was entertained by watching customers juggling three or more of them back to their seats – but was happy to find full-sized soda cups on the sixth floor.

My advice to anyone who visits the club is to walk all the spaces as there is a broad variety of offerings throughout. I’ll be interested to see what adjustments Legends makes either before the next game or throughout the year as they learn the facility and what this customer base wants.

Everything up to now is prelude.

We can now talk about LSU – as if we haven’t -- without fear of being ridiculed for looking ahead. Speaking of which, you have to love the Marching Chiefs who threw all superstitious caution to the wind and used the Duquesne halftime to rehearse the show they have planned for the Superdome next Sunday. Gutsy.

The Osceola staff will be in N.O. in force. Fun weekend with a big game atmosphere.

Expect the Superdome to be dominated by LSU folks. Yes, Florida State received and sold 30,000 tickets – the same as LSU – but it will be interesting to see how many of those 30,000 FSU tickets will find their way into LSU hands.

Even if the Seminoles have exactly the same number of seats occupied as the Tigers, don’t be surprised if it sounds like there’s more of them than us. Why? Because those folks are straight loud. Even between plays you’ll notice they are loud talkers, like their-hearing-aids-don’t-work loud.

LSU has talent (NFL talent) across the defensive front, which will be a real test for FSU’s strength, the running game. But what I see cookin’ in Nawlins is a gumbo of leftovers from the Ed Orgeron era mixed with a slew of transfer players and a couple dozen incoming freshmen dumped in. And the man put in charge of stirring the pot is a natural born Yankee!

First year head coach Brian Kelly hails from Everett, Mass., and his coaching resume includes stops at Grand Valley State (Mich.), Central Michigan, Cincinnati and Notre Dame, cultures as far removed from the Bayou folks as I can imagine.

We Seminoles wonder how our program fell so far so fast so it’s a natural topic of conversation to strike with the people you meet wearing purple and gold. Imagine being a Tiger fan who celebrated a national championship win over Clemson (42-25) in January 2020 and less than three years later they saw their Tigers fall to Kansas State in the Texas Bowl 40-22 to finish 6-7 on the season.

The Tigers were dealt a series of blows – opt outs, guys entering the portal, NFL Draft declarations – until only 39 scholarship players were left standing.

Like Norvell, Kelly must rebuild with a slew of transfer players. While Norvell is in his third year and finally has a roster filled with his guys, Kelly is trying to flip the culture within six months of arriving. We Seminoles know folding those factions into a team ain't an easy to do overnight.

LSU athletics director Scott Woodward, who hired Kelly on a 10-year, $95 million contract, is the same guy who lured Jimbo Fisher from FSU to Texas A&M on a 10-year, $75 million contract while Woodward was the Aggies AD. Woodward and Fisher came to know each other when Woodward was an LSU assistant AD and Fisher a member of Nick Saban’s LSU coaching staff.

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