There’s No Place Like ... Spectrum Stadium, and how it changed UCF football,
Knights embrace their own place after years of ‘home’ games away
They don’t quite understand when you try to tell them the story of what UCF football used to be like in the dark ages before their home stadium was built.
Today’s players look at you like you’re crazy when you tell them about that first UCF game played on a goat ranch near Tampa back in 1979 when the Knights were an upstart Division III outfit of misfits.
Former UCF coach George O’Leary says now with his signature bluntness, “Today’s players don’t know how lucky they are.”
One of those players, linebacker Shaquem Griffin, acknowledges as much. After a recent practice, he looks over at Spectrum Stadium and talks to it as if it’s a person. “We love her. I’d hate to think where we would be without her.”
Ask some of the old-time players and coaches and they will tell you exactly where UCF would be without the stadium. They can tell you this because they’ve already been there. They know what it was like before President John Hitt and some of the school’s top donors decided to pursue building an on-campus stadium.
They will tell you about the first team and the first practice back in 1979 when there was no expansive indoor facility, palatial locker rooms, state-of-the-art training complex and plans to build a lazy river. Back then, there were no scholarships — let alone diva kickers who would give up their scholarship to become a YouTube star.
According to an article written by former Sentinel columnist Larry Guest, there were 148 who showed for UCF's first practice in 1979 — among them, "a bartender, a beekeeper, a bouncer and a guy who boasted experience with a team that had placed second in a flag football league."
They had to buy their own shoes and socks and jerseys and jocks. The players had to pay their own way and Don Jonas, UCF’s first head coach, was an unpaid volunteer who had a full-time job working for the city.
Their first game was at Saint Leo College in 1979, literally played during a summertime rain storm in a field that was once a cow pasture.
O’Leary, before he retired two years ago, would often hear from former UCF players who thanked him for helping shepherd their school into the modern era of college football. “Whenever I talked to the old-time players, they would be so appreciative of how far we’d come as a program,” O’Leary says.
The Knights used to play their games in the cavernous and dilapidated old Citrus Bowl — a stadium that was way too big for UCF’s fan base and way too far away from campus for UCF’s student body. “Every game,” O’Leary recalls, “was like an away game.”
To make matters worse, UCF felt unappreciated in the city-operated Citrus Bowl. Hitt told me the story once of why he decided to pursue an on-campus stadium.
The final slap in the face from the city came when the Citrus Bowl added a new video board several years ago and former UCF athletics director Steve Orsini was trying to negotiate a share of the advertising revenue for UCF.
“There was a take-UCF-for-granted attitude,” Hitt remembered. “When Steve was talking about a share of revenues on the new video board, he was told the value of UCF's fans was nothing — zero. That didn't sit too well with us and got us looking in other directions.”
Hitt has said many times the stadium would have never been built without the aggressiveness and acumen of big-time booster Jerry Roth. When UCF first studied building the new stadium, the estimated cost was an unaffordable $130 million. Roth, an astute businessman who made his millions in pharmaceuticals, did his own study and found that pre-engineered stadiums could be erected for a little more than $50 million.
And, so, Bright House Networks (now Spectrum) Stadium was built and the historic first game against Texas was played on Sept. 15, 2007. The storied Longhorns eked out a dramatic 35-32 victory that, a decade later, O’Leary still laments, “If we don’t fumble the ball, we win that game.”
UCF may have lost on the scoreboard, but that landmark day symbolized perhaps the biggest victory in UCF athletic history. I remember walking through the tailgate lots that day and seeing out-of-town alumni who hadn’t been on campus for a generation and frat boys and sorority girls who had never before been to a home football game.
Eddie Garcia, a senior majoring in molecular microbiology, wore black and gold face paint and a cape that said, “Welcome to the Longhorn Slaughterhouse.”
“We finally have a home — a real home,” Garcia said then. “I'm happy because I'm here to experience this, but I'm sad because this makes me wish I was a freshman all over again. I'd love to be here for another four years.”
Said then-UCF starting quarterback Kyle Israel: “In 20 years, when I come back here to watch games, it's going to feel special to know I played in the first game in this place. Nobody can ever take that away.”
Current UCF assistant coach Sean Beckton was a star receiver for UCF in the 1980s and was in the new stadium as a fan on that historic, euphoric day in 2007.
“It was an unbelievable feeling being there and having that sense of pride as our team ran onto the field,” Beckton recalls. “It was an emotional moment.”
Beckton is now the recruiting coordinator under head coach Scott Frost and he says the stadium and the surrounding football complex has been a major factor in UCF being able to attract the attention of so many more high-level prospects. He says many recruits are wideeyed when they see how plush and palatial UCF’s facilities are.
“The stadium is huge for us,” Frost says. “Having a stadium where students and alumni congregate on campus is not only important for the football team but for the entire university. Having our own stadium separates us from our rival down south (USF).”
Says linebacker Shaquem Griffin: “You take great pride in being able to call something your home. It’s like my childhood home in St. Pete. If somebody comes to your house, you’re going to do whatever you can to protect it. If somebody barges into your home, opens your refrigerator and starts drinking your milk, you’re going to have a problem with that. Everybody’s welcome to come in, but in the end, they better remember whose home it is.”
Griffin is absolutely right. An on-campus stadium symbolizes a house, a haven and, mostly, a home.
And isn’t home such an amazing place because of the people who live there with you? It’s a place to share and a place to care. A place to love and be proud of. A place to protect and a place to respect. I don’t know who exactly said this, but whoever it was must have been a college football fan:
“Home is not a place; it’s a feeling.”
mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com