College football

UF seeks lodging for game at LSU

By ANTONYA ENGLISH
Published September 22, 2005

GAINESVILLE - If the Florida-LSU game were being held this weekend, the Gators wouldn't have anywhere to stay.

Chances are, they won't next month either.

Officials from the Holiday Inn in Gonzales, La., have informed Florida the hotel can't honor the Gators' contract for about 125 rooms previously reserved for the Oct. 15 game in Baton Rouge.

Evacuees and emergency workers helping in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina are residing at the hotel, which is about 20 miles outside of Baton Rouge.

"Right now, we have no rooms," said Greg McGarity, UF's director of athletics for internal affairs. "We are now in search of other rooms with assistance from LSU. That's the agreement they have with visiting schools that they would help in trying to locate other rooms."

The Gators require about 45 rooms for its students (35 for the players, others for trainers, managers, etc.), 45 for staff members and an additional 25 for those who pay their own way, including media.

McGarity said the SEC set up a conference call about two weeks ago with all league schools to talk about the travel logistics and potential problems schools might face. Only Florida's football team is affected, but sports such as volleyball and soccer are affected at other schools.

No. 10 Tennessee is scheduled to fly into Baton Rouge Saturday morning for a nationally-televised game against the Tigers Saturday night.

The Vols normally travel the day before a road game, but they would have displaced employees of a power company helping in the aftermath of Katrina had they stayed at a hotel.

McGarity said LSU believes rooms will open up as disaster relief teams complete their work and return home, but that's only an assumption. Meanwhile, Florida will confer with officials from Tennessee next week to learn more about their trip in the likely event UF has to follow a similar plan.

"We'll talk with the Tennessee staff to evaluate and see how things go." he said.

Florida is expected to find out which network will pick up the UF-LSU game and the game's time either Sunday afternoon or Monday, which will help in travel planning. Ultimately, the Gators may have no choice. Circumstances may dictate they arrive on Saturday.

HURRICANE CHANGES: Rice and Houston postponed home games scheduled for Saturday, and Texas A&M pushed up its game against Texas State, in anticipation of Hurricane Rita reaching the Texas Gulf Coast this weekend. The Aggies face Texas State tonight instead of Saturday. Rice's game against Navy was rescheduled for Oct. 22, an open date for both. Houston officials are looking at Nov. 12 or 13 for a makeup against Southern Miss, with the Houston-SMU game that was scheduled for Nov. 12 moved to Nov. 19.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

[Last modified September 22, 2005, 01:04:14]