Hotels win as bowl teams stream into area

The University of Michigan football team wanted to check into the TradeWinds Island Resort on St. Pete Beach for some extra practice before playing in the Outback Bowl in Tampa. But they were surprised to learn Joe Paterno had beat them to the place by two days.

Paterno's Penn State team isn't in the Outback-sponsored game. It's facing Auburn in the Capital One Bowl in Orlando on New Year's Day. But the veteran coach likes to bring his bowl teams to Florida for an extra week of practice away from the site of the game. In advance of three past Orlando bowl games, Penn State players spent the week before Christmas at resorts in Daytona Beach and Melbourne. This time Paterno is trying Florida's west coast.

Penn State will practice at Lakewood High School in St. Petersburg the week before Christmas. Then the players will be sent home for Christmas before spending 10 days at the Peabody Hotel in Orlando.

Michigan, which will be in town to practice a week before Christmas, too, moved on to book rooms at the St. Petersburg Hilton Hotel and will practice at Boca Ciega High School. Then the Wolverines will move to the Wyndham Harbour Island in Tampa the week before the Outback Bowl. Their Outback opponent, the University of Florida Gators, will be holed up at the downtown Hyatt Regency Tampa the week before the game. But their band will be staying at the Adam's Mark on Clearwater Beach.

Michigan was willing to share the TradeWinds with Penn State, which needed only 95 of the more than 1,000 a rooms at the resort.

"The rule in the hotel business is never house two groups at the same time that compete with each other," said Linda Elland, the TradeWinds sales director. "We definitely didn't want to go there with two college football teams."

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