When Brian Schmitz was hired to cover sports for the Orlando Sentinel in 1975, the town was already called \u201cThe City Beautiful.\u201d He had another way to describe it and its sports scene.<\/p>\n
\u201cMayberry. It was Mayberry,\u201d he said, referring to the bucolic town from the old Andy Griffith TV show.<\/p>\n
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Schmitz was part of a panel of journalists and community leaders who discussed Central Florida\u2019s sports history and its future on Wednesday night as part of the Orlando Sentinel\u2019s 150th anniversary celebration. The event took place at Forward\/Slash Distillery & Blending House in Winter Park and was sponsored by the Arnold Palmer Invitational golf tournament.<\/p>\n
Palmer\u2019s tournament, then known as the Florida Citrus Open, was one of the few big sports events in the city in the 1970s, Schmitz said. The bulk of his reporting focused on small boxing events, high school sports, the town\u2019s modest college bowl game, minor-league baseball and annual spring training visits from the Minnesota Twins.<\/p>\n
Sleepy Orlando finally joined the big leagues in 1989 when the NBA added the Orlando Magic as an expansion team.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Magic changed everything,\u201d said Marc Daniels, a veteran Orlando sports broadcaster and the radio voice of the UCF Knights for more than 30 years. \u201cIt made a game night a special night to be in downtown Orlando. It didn\u2019t matter if the team won or lost.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Sports was elevated again when the Magic won the NBA draft lottery in 1992 and took future Hall-of-Fame center Shaquille O\u2019Neal from LSU with the No. 1 pick. Penny Hardaway joined the team the following year when the Magic surprisingly won the lottery again.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose first couple of years with Shaq were just awesome,\u201d Daniels said. \u201cWe went from expansion team, just grateful to have a team to, now the face of the NBA, with this incredible young star. And it changed everything about Orlando sports. \u2026 We became a national TV draw.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sentinel columnist Mike Bianchi, who arrived in 2000, said the rise of the area\u2019s hometown university has amazed him over the past 25 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I came here, UCF \u2013 even though they\u2019d been around a while \u2013 they were an afterthought in this town. It was still Florida, Florida State, and then UCF was, you know, we covered them, but not like we do today.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Jason Siegel, president and CEO of the Greater Orlando Sports Commission, and Steve Hogan, CEO of Florida Citrus Sports, talked about how Central Florida has earned a hard-fought reputation as a go-to destination for international and youth sporting events. Some are high profile, some low profile \u2014 but what they have in common is bringing visitors to the area and filling tourism tax coffers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe return on investment with youth sports is sometimes astronomical,\u201d Siegel said. He cited the Amateur Athletic Union, which holds the world\u2019s largest volleyball tournament in Orlando, and recently renewed its contract for the next 8-10 years. The AAU brings \u201c6500 teams over three-and-a-half weeks at the convention center, which drives $300-400 million worth of spending in our community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s now known as the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl was created in 1947 to draw visitors to Orlando. It and a companion game, the Pop-Tarts Bowl, both do that but also bring a heavy dose of exposure. Both Orlando bowl games drew higher TV ratings than all the other college bowl games this season and outperformed two of the college football playoff games as well, Hogan said.<\/p>\n
Florida Citrus Sports is also finding success with bringing a different kind of football to the area.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe\u2019ve hosted a Mount Rushmore of international club soccer,\u201d Hogan explained, listing Chelsea, Arsenal, Real Madrid and Juventus are a few of the teams who have played friendly matches here. His organization is also hosting World Cup tune-ups in Orlando this month involving Croatia, Colombia and Brazil.<\/p>\n
Hogan said Florida Citrus Sports will learn next week if NFL owners approve plans for the Jacksonville Jaguars to play their 2027 season in Orlando while the team\u2019s stadium undergoes renovation. It would be a big step for Orlando, which will garner more visitors and more exposure from hosting a full NFL season at a newly renovated Camping Word Stadium.<\/p>\n
As for the future, most panel members were optimistic about the city possibly gaining more events including a college football championship game, the annual Army-Navy football game, NCAA basketball tournaments and even international rugby championships. They were somewhat split on the possibility of landing a MLB or NFL franchise.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate to be the Mr. Naysayer, but I just don\u2019t see baseball,\u201d said former Sentinel columnist George Diaz. \u201cThere\u2019s already two baseball teams in Florida. And in terms of attendance, the Miami Marlins were 28th, and the Tampa Bay Rays were 29th, and there\u2019s only 32 teams. So I don\u2019t see how \u2026 there\u2019s this great demand for professional baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Hogan was optimistic about a possible NFL franchise in Orlando, despite three teams in the state already.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt some point it\u2019s going to be unavoidable,\u201d he said. \u201cYou look at the growth of Orlando, the diversification of Orlando, look at how the economy\u2019s going.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re gonna have any sport that we\u2019re aggressive enough to pursue. I truly believe that\u2026 I think its too big of a market to ignore.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Brian Schmitz was hired to cover sports for the Orlando Sentinel in 1975, the town was already…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[13221,95209,147,29582,95211,95212,28,121,95208,3822,24221,139,141,1239,140,16741,95210,25947,3815,3865],"class_list":{"0":"post-207707","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-arsenal","9":"tag-brian-schmitz","10":"tag-central-florida","11":"tag-chelsea","12":"tag-college-bowl-game","13":"tag-expansion-team","14":"tag-florida","15":"tag-jacksonville-jaguars","16":"tag-marc-daniels","17":"tag-miami-marlins","18":"tag-minnesota-twins","19":"tag-orlando","20":"tag-orlando-headlines","21":"tag-orlando-magic","22":"tag-orlando-news","23":"tag-orlando-sentinel","24":"tag-sports-broadcaster","25":"tag-steve-hogan","26":"tag-tampa-bay-rays","27":"tag-ucf-knights"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}