Place an Ad Calendars Classified Forums Sports Weather

sptimes.com Text-only News sections Arts & Entertainment AP The Wire Business Citrus County Columnists Floridian Hernando County Hillsborough Letters Movies Neighborhood Times News Update North Pinellas North of Tampa Obituaries Opinion Pasco County South Pinellas Sports State Tampa Bay TV Times World & Nation  Find your local news section Weekly sections Brandon Times City Times Homes Outdoors Perspective Personal Tech Taste Travel Weekend Xpress Special Sections Arena football Buccaneers College football Devil Rays Lightning Police reports Schools Seniority Subscriber Services Subscribe Renew Help Advertise Place an ad In print Online Market Info Join Us Internships Scholarships Times Jobs Contact us

Making it easier to plan road trip

By GREG AUMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published September 8, 2000

With all respect to necessity, the mother of Brian Rowe's invention was simple frustration.

Last year, the 33-year-old from Tallahassee was trying to plan a trip to follow Florida State's football team but found it difficult to find the information online.

One site had good options for where to stay, another had driving directions, and none told him where to find a campus bar for after the game. The week of the Florida-Florida State game, confined to his bed by a torn ACL in his right knee, Rowe decided to solve his problem.

Nine months later, Rowe unveiled goingtothegame.com, a site devoted to helping fans get what they need for trips to college and pro football games.

"It really came out of being a frustrated fan," said Rowe, who used his own site to arrange a trip to Jacksonville for the Seminoles' opener against BYU. "I found it incredibly difficult to find a place where I could park my motor home before games."

Take Saturday's FSU-Georgia Tech game in Atlanta. On one page, Seminole fans headed to Atlanta can get a stadium layout to see where their seats are, point-to-point directions to the stadium, plus phone numbers for local dining and lodging.

Hotels are ranked by their proximity to the stadium (down to the nearest one-hundredth of a mile), as are local restaurants and public golf courses. Fans can also get updates on local road construction delays, plus five-day weather forecasts and radar maps updated every 15 minutes.

Again, it's information that was already online, but Rowe believes the convenience of getting all of it at one site is a huge plus.

"If you searched hard enough, you could have found this somewhere," he said. "But we had five people trying for months to gather all of the information. You'd find a school's Web site that still had a 1998 schedule up, and it's amazing how different sites will give you different directions to the same place."

The site offers 25 hotels within a mile of Saturday's kickoff in Atlanta, and 22 golf courses within a 20-mile radius. A word to the wise: nearest isn't always best. A look at Gainesville's page shows that both the Bambi Motel and the Sheraton are less than 2 miles from Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. Let's just say there's more separating these two than a couple hundred feet.

Earlier this year, Rowe launched goingtotherace.com, which serves the same function for NASCAR's Winston Cup, Busch and Craftsman Truck circuits, as well as CART and Indy Racing. He plans to add listings for basketball and hockey when their seasons begin, with baseball scheduled for next spring.

Other sites to check out before you apply any face paint: tailgating.com, which has recipes ranging from Tiger Stadium muffaletta to Southern Miss pirogis, and special tailgating tips ("Dress in team colors!!!" it explains); or tailgatetown.com, which offers everything from bean bag chairs to keg-shaped grills.

JUST GIVE ME THE DAMN KEYBOARD: Bucs receiver Keyshawn Johnson had some harsh words for quarterback Shaun King on his official page at athletesdirect.com, questioning King's thinking in telling the media the name for the fake-spike play the Bucs scored a touchdown with Sunday: "I don't know why Shaun would tell people what it was called. That's a nine-game, inexperienced move, to tell everyone the name of the play. ... We practice it a lot, like almost every day. I'm sure we'll use it again at some point this season, but I don't think we're going to call it "Kill! Kill!' again."

CHATWATCH: Georgia football coach Jim Donnan will chat at 7 p.m. Tuesday on the team's official site, georgiadogs.com. ... Former Olympic swimmer Nancy Hogshead, who won three gold medals in 1984 and is a member of the Florida Sports Hall of Fame, chats at usatoday.com at 2 p.m. Wednesday.

TID-BYTES: Tampabaylightning.com, the team's official site, is down as it undergoes renovations. The site's main page says to look for a relaunch in mid-September. ... Bo Yelverton of Nashville, Tenn., writes to advise any Bucs fans looking for radio broadcasts of games online to check out www.1059ynf.com, home of Sarasota's WYNF-FM 105.9, part of the Buccaneers Radio Network. ... Sprinters Maurice Greene and Brooksville's John Capel are among the Olympic athletes writing "diaries" for CNNSI.com. Such player diaries are typically ghost-written or transcribed from interviews, but a little fact-checking never hurts. Not only did the story have Capel's personal-best time from the Olympic trials incorrect, it also misspelled the name of his 2-month-old daughter.

- If you have a question or comment about the Internet or a site to suggest, send an e-mail to staff writer Greg Auman at aumanac1@aol.com.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright