***PRIME***TIME*** Coach Prime, Deion Sanders

In my last post about my blog name, alma mater and fandom, I ended on a player I did not originally care for. He arrived at Florida State from Fort Myers the year after I moved to Tallahassee. As I detailed in my last post, I was not an instant fan of the university or the team. In fact, I was a little annoyed at the garnet and gold displayed everywhere and the rabidity of the fans there. I'd never lived in a college football town...let alone in the Deep South!

So this braggadocios, multi-sport athlete from South Florida makes a big splash in town and at Florida State. He almost immediately garnered national attention and a couple of shiny nicknames--"Neon Deion" and "PrimeTime." Then came the infamous "Seminole Shuffle," a spin on the Chicago Bears "SuperBowl Shuffle" a couple years prior. I liked when the Bears did it (and backed it up). The Nole version was followed by a serious ass-whoppin' by #2 Miami (well deserved, in my opinion).

Deion Sanders rapping during the infamous shuffle.

 

He went on to be a success in two professional sports, then followed it up with a TV career. For awhile, PrimeTime was everywhere. I didn't dislike him so much after I became a devotee of Florida State Football and an alum. He'd helped Bowden to forge a dynasty and put our program on the map.

Fast forward to the Willie Taggart fiasco at Florida State and the search for a new head coach. Taggart was FSU's first African-American head coach, though alum and Defensive Line Coach, Odell Hagins, had served as interim.

I REALLY, REALLY wanted my alma mater to follow-up with a second African-American head coach...and his name was now COACH PRIME!

Yes, at the time Coach Prime was untested, but before HBCU Jackson State scooped him up, I wanted FSU to make a PR splash (like we've seen at Colorado the last six months) and take a chance. Prime is a proven winner--and say what you will about his hype and swag--HE BACKS IT UP!

I'm still real sick we couldn't find the courage to hire our former star corner and NFL Hall of Famer. Instead, we settled for Mike Norvell out of Memphis, a move I'm only slowly coming around to appreciate. Still...what coulda been...

Now, naysayers were still questioning Colorado's decision late last year to make Coach Prime a Power 5 head coach. I say "BRAVO! Well done, Buffaloes!" It was a decision that paid immediate dividends. How many 1-11 programs make the kind of immediate turnaround we've seen in Boulder? THEY SOLD OUT THEIR SPRING GAME! Programs like Florida State and Alabama don't even do that! They even beat out the latter on garnering ESPN's national spotlight. They broadcast the sold-out game and I watched every minute of it.

Just like Coach Prime did at JSU, he once again is stealing some of my alma mater's top recruits for Colorado. He has 4- and 5-star recruits lining up to make visits. And all I can think, is imagine if he had the prestige and marketing of FSU behind those recruiting efforts??

He's turning lowly Colorado around right before our eyes. He did it in Jackson, Mississippi, and now he's taken the Prime train to Boulder. I can't wait to see how his team performs in the fall. I believe they become bowl eligible for the first time in a long time. We'll see, but just in marketing and sales, alone, he's already worth his weight in gold! The school has already sold out season tickets for the upcoming football season. Coach Prime merchandise sales are off the charts!

This is the buzz and excitement I wanted at FSU a few years back. Instead, we heard a big thud with the Norvell hire. Let's just say, he's no Coach Prime.

All I can say about it all is: LET'S GO BUFFS!!! #SkoBuffs

#CoachPrime #PrimeTime #DeionSanders #Coach21Prime

A Proud Florida State Seminole: A Retrospective

My Dad moved to Tallahassee in April 1986 for a new position. He would lead the Florida Credit Union League. We helped him move into a small apartment on the city's northside during my senior year spring break. The family would join him a week after my graduation in June.

When I arrived in Tallahassee that year, I knew very little of Florida State University or Bobby Bowden or the fledgling dynasty. I just knew I lived in Florida!

The University sat near the heart of downtown on the city's westside and was bounded on one side by the Florida A&M University and not too far to the west, the school I would attend, Tallahassee Community College. This was very much a college and state government town, with a large transient population. Everyone in town seemed to be a fan of FSU Football and Coach Bowden. Little did I know, at that time, that I'd become one, too, or that I'd witness the building of a dynasty in little old Tallahassee.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

You see, when I got there, the small campus boasted a very high school-looking football stadium with a weird name, Doak Campbell. Literally, it looked like an erector set from the outside, long before it became a brick behemoth, "the House that Bobby Built." It was really quite laughable to me.

I don't remember attending any games that first year there. One striking feature of the metallic skeletal stadium was the scoreboard and "flaming spear" that seemed to light up with crowd noise. The louder the crowd, the higher the lights on the spear would rise until reaching the flame at the top. That was pretty cool, as was all the pregame fanfare, culminating in a student in full Seminole Tribe costume, riding his Appaloosa steed to midfield and planting an ACTUAL flaming spear in the center of the warrior head logo. THAT was impressive! (It still gives me goosebumps!)

I'd post a video, but everyone is familiar with the tradition, the best in college football, I'd argue. But that first year, 1986, I hardly paid attention to college football or the Noles. I honestly didn't understand what all the hype was about. Then, the Bowden-led Noles played my Indiana Hoosiers in the All-American Bowl and beat them. I thought that was a cool coincidence. Then, I met a third-string lineman at church and we became fast friends. Thus, my interest in Florida State Football started to grow.

I remember when Burt Reynolds, the famed alum, paid for new dorms for the football players. My buddy moved in the first year, 1987, and at the end of that season, traveled with his team to Tempe, Arizona, for the Fiesta Bowl v. Nebraska. I got to stay in his new dorm room while he was away. Now, I'm becoming more enmeshed in the culture and taking notice of the team. They beat Tom Osborne's Nebraska, by the way (a pre-cursor/foreshadowing of the 1993 National Championship Game).

Fast forward to 1991 and my buddy no longer plays for the Noles, but is living in a frat house on campus. I'd followed his career and his team, but I was still a holdout. If it was "cool" to love the Seminoles, I wasn't going to be cool. I still considered myself a casual college football fan, at that point, and a Notre Dame fan. HOWEVER, when Bowden took his team to Ann Arbor and silenced a crowd of 106,000+ I was SOLD! That was the day I became a Seminole fan 100%! Right there in my buddy's frat room, watching the exciting drama unfold on national TV. AND HISTORY, as no visiting team had ever scored 50+ points on the Michigan Wolverines!!

Click HERE for a Florida State-Michigan recap.
 

THE DYNASTY

Most people agree that Bowden's dynasty began in the decade of the 1990's, leading up to his first National Championship behind Heisman QB Charlie Ward in 1993, and continuing into the Coach Jimbo Fisher years, through the 2013 National Championship behind Heisman QB Jameis Winston.

I was there for it all!

After letting down my guard fully mid-season 1991, I eventually enrolled at Florida State as a junior, working my way through college to a degree in Communication (Class of 1997). I was a part-time student for a good portion of the 1990's. I attended as many football games, for free, as I could. I was front and center for the rise of Charlie Ward and the fast-paced, shotgun offense that suited his talents best. I vividly remember the victory celebration at Doak in January 1994.

During my tenure at FSU, I worked in the Cashier's office, starting in June 1990 at the iconic Westcott Building, the entrance to campus. The university would soon begin the largest brick construction project on the planet. "The House that Bobby Built" would soon become a reality and my new workspace. I can remember moving into the first floor, in the corner facing Pensacola and Varsity Drive. I thought I worked in the coolest place in the world! I'd take my lunches out into the stadium and sit in the bleachers eating, marveling, reminiscing...

I immersed myself in college football and FSU, attending the first visit of ESPN's College Gameday in 1993, making sure to get The Pony's (Craig James) autograph for my new wife. She was enamored. :)

I took on an online persona for the ESPN chat boards (a big thing at the time): NOLESROCK

And thus a self-administered nickname was borne and I use it for the title of this blog (in case you were wondering where that came from).

My then wife scored us tickets to the 1999 National Championship Game at the Superdome in New Orleans. We watched Bowden and the Pete Warrick-led Noles beat the Gators, such sweet revenge for a regular season loss! It was our SECOND national championship and tasted just as sweet as the first!

Thus, the Bowden Dynasty would take shape right before my adoring eyes. By the end of the decade, I was an alum of the best university in Florida.

Some of my best memories are attending football and basketball games with my roommates--the former player I mentioned earlier and a goofball named Shawn!

There was a player in the late 80's, who at the time I didn't care for. His nickname was PRIME TIME. In the next blog post, I'll talk more about him and where he is now. I'm a great admirer these days!

Power Failure in Tallahassee-Leon County

TALLAHASSEE - Power failed post-Hurricane Hermine and the lights went out, too. The power structure of city-county government failed to serve the residents of the capital city in an efficient and effective manner. No amount of spin on social media is going to cover for an inept municipal government that bungled the power restoration effort to a city nearly blacked out overnight Thursday and into Friday morning, as a weakening Category 1 storm made landfall southeast of Tallahassee.

Scott Maddox and Mayor Andrew Gillum took to social media in the immediate aftermath of the storm to assure constituents, 80-percent of whom sat in the dark, that power was being restored as quickly as possible. Four days later, more than 20,000 city utility customers still had none. That would be a reasonable response time for a hurricane of any magnitude, but taking into account this was no more than severe thunderstorm strength on the weaker, western side of Hermine, it is inexcusable.

Maddox was trying to encourage patience and keep Tallahassee's residents informed. The mayor was playing the politician's favorite game of covering one's own backside with wordplay. "We are happy to accept any help," the mayor posted to Facebook. The problem with these words are that you don't sit in a darkened city and wait for the cavalry to arrive. Did he learn nothing from New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's inaction and ineptitude post-Katrina in 2005? The cavalry, in this case nearly 600 Florida Power and Light employees situated in Lake City 100 miles away, doesn't impose its will on a community and start working to restore its power grid. There's a procedure in place that involves no more than a simple phone call or e-mail to the State Emergency Response Team across town at the Emergency Operations Center in SouthWood. And that call simply needs to be made through the Leon County Emergency Management structure. Yet, no one seems to be calling out Emergency Management Director Kevin Peters or even including him in this discussion. That's the chain of command. City manager coordinates with county EM and the call is made to the state and immediate help is sent to the city.

This is Emergency Management 101. When the capabilities of a local community are overwhelmed, the county and state work to provide the necessary resources.

Mutual aid compacts exist between states to allow for procurement of resources across state lines with full reimbursement available. Closer to home, municipalities and county resources stand at the ready to assist each other and those resources are under the Governor's purview once a state of emergency is declared. And in the case of this storm, a private utility company stood at the ready to pounce on Tallahassee's large-scale power outage. The Governor had to act where the city and county did not, at least not quickly enough by all counts, in the wake of Hurricane Hermine.

That's when the finger-pointing started in the media; all the while, Mayor Gillum insisting he hadn't denied any and all help. An article in Saturday morning's Tallahassee Democrat told a different story, one of a city utility manager speaking in direct contradiction of the mayor. "If you send 150 more trucks, we don't have 150 people to put on those trucks," he told the Democrat. Jim Rosica, in a blog post today, tells of the offer of help from FPL President Eric Sigaly who was sitting across from Gillum and utilities chief Rob McGarrah. The problem of 150 hardly seems like an excuse for denying the help of the private utility.

As the city's top brass, they should have made those calls Friday as soon as they knew the extent of the power outage. Every available resource, including FPL, should have been in Tallahassee Friday evening, ready to get the job done. And instead of pointing fingers and covering his own backside, Mayor Gillum should have been leading the cavalry, not waiting for it to arrive uninvited.

The blame game continues today as 17,000 remain without power, air conditioning or refrigeration in their homes. At some point, the mayor and the local governments need to step up and take accountability. What if Hermine had been a Category 3 or higher storm? How would the capital city handle what would unequivocally be a utility apocalypse?

There's no denying that this storm caused unforeseen levels of damage to the region's power grid, especially considering that there weren't copious amounts of rain, like what the Tampa Bay region experienced last week, nor were hurricane force winds felt in any part of Leon County. The real power failure, however, rests with city hall, plain and simple. We can do better, Mayor Gillum. We must. Your job depends on it.

---

Chris Doyle is a former Public Information Officer with the State Emergency Response Team in Florida and a freelance writer. Contact: doyle_cm@yahoo.com.

#kickcancersass

Trying to get traction for the new hashtag:

#kickcancersass

Use it liberally and be sure to like my new page on Facebook.

Ghost roads to nowhere (Fallschase)

Dateline: Tallahassee

Disclaimer: I was provided these personal photos by a friend of mine and ghost hunter who did not want to be named for obvious reasons. The photos credited to Anonymous Donor are his property and are used with permission on condition of anonymity.

Photo credit: Anonymous Donor

There are ghost roads in Tallahassee that wind through moss-draped live oaks, heritage oaks and pine trees. They meander through an area stuck in time, it would seem, a reminder of what the east side of town used to look like before the urban sprawl. These long abandoned, curbed thoroughfares descend from Buck Lake Road through what promised to be Tallahassee's premier, luxury home neighborhood in the mid-1970's. It was the brainchild of would-be developer E. Lamar Bailey. Fallschase. Even the name conjured up images of pine forests with babbling creeks that cascaded over rocky falls and into a pristine lake.

I drove by the brick entry sign that spelled out Fallschase in block capital letters many times before ever venturing down those forgotten streets.

The sign but a mere memory now, razed when the development of a town center mall and new Fallschase Parkway were laid out in the first decade of the new millenium, was a landmark along Buck Lake Road. It pointed towards a never-realized promise of peaceful living among the massive trees, on sleepy, canopy-like roads, on a hill overlooking two lakes.

According to my research, it's now been 40 years since real estate developer/swindler E. Lamar Bailey laid out a master plan for a residential neighborhood in the forested, rolling hills between Buck Lake Road and Lake Lafayette. There's no need for me to document the entire sordid history, as you can read Bob Rackleff's timeline here (through 2003). Suffice to say, there was corruption, lawsuits, bankruptcies, bank foreclosures, federal grand juries and plenty of legal wrangling over this jewel on Tallahassee's east side. Sadly, nothing ever became of the residential part of it, but it wasn't for a lack of funding. There were millions in defaulted loans and somehow Bailey and his son have kept their hand in the proverbial pot the whole time.

Aerial view of Fallschase looking south, Photo credit: LAI Engineering 

As you can see from the aerial photo above, borrowed from the LAI Engineering website, this is what's become known as the Fallschase Town Center at the corner of Mahan Drive (US 90 East) and Buck Lake Road. The large white-roof on the right side is a Wal-Mart Supercenter and the building in the furthest corner is Costco. The dirt patch in-between those two giant retailers is now home to a Bass Pro Shop. Look to the back of Costco and you'll see a rectangular holding pond, a dirt patch and what looks like a small landing strip. That's the end of a road in the old Fallschase Development that still winds through the western half of the property over to Davis Road, where all the luxury homes were to be built.

The old house that served as E. Lamar Bailey's residence and home office, 4475 Buck Lake Road, is boarded up and stands along one of the paved, one-lane roads leading into the old development. You can still access this private drive off Buck Lake Road just past Fallschase Parkway. A team of ghost hunters entered the boarded-up residence in January 2013.

There is much evidence of vagrancy and vandalism in the last decade. That's unfortunate.

The residential section as drawn up by Moore Bass Consulting in June 2008

Through the years, many proposals have been submitted to the powers that be in Leon County, including the above drawing done for AIG Baker by Moore Bass Consulting in 2008. None of the proposals ever made it past that stage. And in the special taxing district's sordid 40-year history, only four homes were ever built. (See another AIG Baker conceptual design for the site, here.)

When I was driving through the mostly wooded neighborhood in the early 2000's, you could still drive up to a couple of the magnificent brick homes, one of which now lies in charred ruins (see below).

Photo credit: Anonymous Donor

Photo credit: Anonymous Donor

Photo credit: Anonymous Donor

WCTV reported a fire at an abandoned plantation house in Fallschase on the afternoon of March 31, 2010.
The Tallahassee Democrat posted an update that morning about the Fallschase house fire and provided a great photo. It was a sad end for one of the only traces of what Fallschase wanted to become in the 1980's. That's what those brick homes reminded me of...upscale subdivisions like the ones built near Carmel while I was attending a parochial high school on Indianapolis' north side (1982-86).

According to my friend, some of the curbed, tree-lined streets are still in good condition. The wooden bridges, for the most part, are as well.

Photo credit: Anonymous Donor

There are still brick walls along the main thoroughfare, a divided, two-way street, now covered with graffiti. When I drove those roads in early 2000, I noticed that the brick in those retention walls (and bridges) didn't exactly match the brick from the old entrance, photo'd above. I didn't really see the need for them, either, but it seemed to go with the mostly brick motif of the few houses and cul-de-sacs.

Urban Tallahassee reported in October 2012 that Columbus Pacific had bought out the property, including the town center mall and the proposed housing addition. Almost two years prior, it was reported that previous owner AIG Baker had filed for bankruptcy protection on the property. The company had posted to their website, "Residential ground breaking is scheduled for Fall 2008." No idea what Columbus Pacific plans, but AIG Baker had proposed more than 1500 homes in the Lake Lafayette watershed.

In early 2013, someone posted this ad to Urban Tallahassee forums. Apparently, the residential-zoned piece of Fallschase is again up for sale. It's now gone undeveloped for 40 years, since Bailey & Associates vision in the early 70's.

Unless someone buys this property, is environmentally responsible with it's development and actually builds some homes there, this land will remain unused and abandoned. From my friend's photos, it looks like a ghost town, a mere shadow of the prosperity of the 80's. And all those ghost roads, now blocked from Buck Lake and Davis Roads, as well as the parkway, continue to deteriorate as they lead no one to nowhere.

Here are more photos from the Tallahassee Explorations page on Tumblr.com, as well as an online presentation from Rachel Cohen, below.



UPDATE (3/18/14):
Yesterday, I found an old Tallahassee street map from 1987 that not only shows the original Fallschase Boulevard, but names all the residential streets as they were orignally laid out in the 80's.

Notice, the original alignment of Buck Lake Road (and I had forgotten this), was further east on Mahan than it currently sits. I can remember, there was a dead-end segment that came off Mahan near the current day intersection of the two roads, but in the 80's you had to go past that to the flashing yellow light (I believe the stoplight came later), turn right, curve south and the brick Fallschase sign was one of the first things that you saw.

Looking at a current Google Map, you can still search these street names and the pointer will show you where they are currently. For example, Sperrit Boundin would've run through the middle of the commercial property where Costco is, and Hidden Nest-Gardens End cross streets would now be underwater, thanks to the commercial property's large holding pond. The first visible roads off the main road are Hahnsum (or Hahnslim) Kerridge and Thorough Brace. From that portion eastward, the roads are still pretty much intact including an arm that runs north to the old Bailey home and Buck Lake Road, while the boulevard runs east to a ridge, just feet from the unpaved portion of Davis Road. Wish the old maps showed those roads, however the branch connecting to Buck Lake seems to be a private drive for the residence at 4475 Buck Lake Rd (i.e. the old Bailey home). Not sure yet who owned the home back in the woods at the end of Davis Rd, or if it still exists. You can zoom in on Google Earth and see the home and an unkempt property, obviously abandoned.