~Patriotworld.com~Home of 2003 Patriots Fan of the Year & Tedy Bruschi Fan Tribute Site

Editor’s note: The following represents the fourth part of a five-part series leading up to Super Bowl XXXIX.

SEEKONK -- Even in New England, it might be difficult to find a group of students as excited about the Super Bowl as the children at Seekonk’s Northern Elementary School.

Principal Joan Mullen said she’s even surprised at how much the students have fallen in love with the New England Patriots.

"We have such spirit, we really do," she said of the school. "All the kids are really excited about the game."

Part of that obsession might be explained by the fact that Patriots star quarterback Tom Brady and wide receiver Bethel Johnson made a special visit to Northern back in November.

Jacob Taylor, a second-grader at Northern, had entered and won this region’s "Bring a Football Player to School," contest, a nationwide effort by the NFL and JC Penney to promote the after-school program’s fund-raising activities.

By winning the contest, Taylor got the opportunity to take New England Patriots player Dave Patten to school and show him off.

But twice he was disappointed, when the NFL cancelled Patten’s appearance, citing a "scheduling glitch."

To make up for any hurt feelings, Brady and Johnson made the trip to the school themselves and threw footballs with the kids -- who weren’t even born yet when Patriots veterans like Troy Brown entered the league.

"They really did develop a special bond with the Patriots after they made their visit here," Mullen said.

At Calcutt Middle School in Central Falls, Karen Cardoza’s students are just as excited. Cardoza, a teacher there, was named Patriots Fan of the Year in 2003 and has brought various players into her classroom over the years to meet students.

"My new (sixth-grade) students this year, from the first day of the school year, were asking me if we are going to be having a Super Bowl party," she said. "They follow all the games. It’s amazing how much they followed the Patriots all season."

Every Monday, Cardoza told her students to write about what they did the preceding weekend. She said many of her students would check the newspapers for stories about the Patriots that inspired them.

"The players are now subjects of their little stories," she said. "I think it teaches them about teamwork, working together and perseverance, and how to get along with other people."

Cardoza attended last year’s Super Bowl in Houston and plans to travel down to Jacksonville, Fla., this weekend, even though she doesn’t yet have a ticket.

She is also planning to throw a small Super Bowl party for her students next week after the game.

"We actually turn it into a learning experience for the kids," Cardoza said. "It’s a perfect opportunity to teach them life skills like how to behave in a social environment."

Thousands fan out for a place to stay

Business is brisk at hotels in Volusia County, where Speedweeks will be getting under way.

By Todd Pack | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted February 2, 2005

Sunday's Super Bowl could pull as many as 120,000 people to Jacksonville, but there aren't enough places to put them all.

With only 35,000 rooms scattered across the region, ticket holders and ticket hunters are snapping up rooms from south Georgia to Central Florida.

Orlando, which saw a bump in business the last time Florida hosted a Super Bowl, isn't likely to see much of one this time around.

Officials say the difference is distance. Four years ago, Super Bowl XXXV was in Tampa, about 90 minutes away. Getting to Jacksonville takes about another hour.

So while some football fans are staying by the attractions or even hiring cars to drive them to the game -- one Orlando company, Happy Limousine, is sending five of its seven limos to Jacksonville Sunday -- most are looking for rooms an hour or two from Alltel Stadium.

Karen Cardoza, a New England Patriots fan from Cumberland, R.I., booked round-trip tickets to Jacksonville in December and a room at the Oceanside Inn in Daytona Beach Shores a week ago. The room, priced at $69 a night last weekend, is listed at $209 a night Super Bowl weekend.

Voted by the Patriots as a fan of the year, Cardoza had hoped to buy Super Bowl tickets directly from the team for their face value of $500, the cheapest price. But she found out a week ago none was available.

Brokers are asking $2,500 apiece. "I love my team, but that's well beyond my means," said Cardoza, a special education teacher.

"I'll probably watch the game in a hotel lounge or something," she said Tuesday.

While tickets to the matchup between the Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles may be hard to come by, hotels all along the Volusia County coast are getting calls from fans looking for affordable rooms within an easy drive of Jacksonville.

Last week, several hotels on the strip had vacancies but expected sellouts because of the game and this weekend's Rolex 24 at Daytona, the start of Speedweeks at Daytona International Speedway.

"We're getting a lot of feelers," people calling to check rates, said Peggy Elliott, a desk clerk at the Coral Beach Motel in Ormond Beach.

On Tuesday, 20 of the beachfront motel's 97 rooms were vacant for Super Bowl weekend, but Elliott expects more to fill up before game day given the rate. Ocean-view rooms priced at $79 a night last week will be $119 Saturday and Sunday, according to the inn's Web site.

What's making it harder for some people to find rooms is that some hotels are still cleaning up from last summer's hurricanes.

Nearly 20 percent of Volusia's 13,000 beachside rooms are closed for renovations or because of storm damage, said Lori Campbell-Baker of the Daytona Beach Area Convention & Visitors Bureau.

But some businesses on the beach say it's hard to guess what impact the football game may have because of the race crowds.

"I don't know how it's going to affect us. We're hoping some people will stay this far south, but I just don't know," said Joe Bates, operating partner of Stonewood Tavern & Grill in Ormond Beach.

Fans who want to come to Florida regardless of the cost are turning to tour operators such as USA Sports Tours of Atlanta, which offers three-night packages for $3,995.

Reservations manager Kim King said the package includes game tickets and daily shuttles to Jacksonville from hotels in Gainesville and Jekyll Island, Ga.-- both about 75 miles from Jacksonville.

In St. Augustine, Country Inn & Suites near the outlet malls and Interstate 95 is sold out this weekend despite charging higher rates. Ordinarily, a standard room goes for $160 a night this time of year, but this weekend, it's $409. That's because the inn is about 35 miles from Alltel.

General manager Amy Laub said no one has protested the higher cost. When it comes to attending an event as big as the Super Bowl, "people know what they're getting," she said.

OrlandoSentinel.com: Business

KNOCKED OUT OF BOUNDS
ROOM SHORTAGE IN HOST CITY JACKSONVILLE COULD LEAVE SOME ATTENDEES OF SUPER BOWL FAR AFIELD

Diehard New England Patriots fan Randy Pierce is worried about becoming homeless. Not in his hometown of Nashua but in Jacksonville, Fla., at Super Bowl XXXIX.

"I have been researching this, and most rooms within an hour's drive or so are booked," says Pierce, 38. He's considering an offer to stay with friends in Tampa, a three-hour drive south from Alltel Stadium, site of the Feb. 6 game. Another possibility: There are plenty of hotel rooms in Atlanta, four hours by car to the north.

Finding quarters closer to the kickoff will be tougher than the traditional tussle for pillow space during the Super Bowl. That's because Jacksonville, located in northeast Florida near the Georgia border, is the smallest city ever to host the Super Bowl. Even though the city is in tourist-friendly Florida, it isn't among the Sunshine State's traditional tourism destinations and has only 15,000 hotel rooms

Sleeping space is so scarce that five cruise ships are being docked in the St. Johns River, which runs through downtown, to add another 3,600 rooms. But don't even try booking them: All are already reserved for the National Football League officials and their corporate guests, largely executives from such major advertisers as Frito-Lay, Pepsi, Motorola, and Visa.

Initially, Jacksonville fell 3,000 hotel rooms short of the NFL's requirement to offer a minimum of 17,500, but the league awarded the big game to the small market after it agreed to bring in cruise ships to make up the difference. For Jacksonville, the Super Bowl is expected to have an overall economic impact of $300 million.

Even with the cruise-ship innovation, the number of expected visitors 150,000 is daunting. The attendee total is predicted to be so big in part because of what may seem to be a logistical contradiction: Jacksonville's Alltel Stadium, which can hold 83,000 fans, has a larger seating capacity than the arenas in most of the 11 cities that have previously hosted a Super Bowl games

So on land and sea alike, all of the rooms in Jacksonville are booked, and there's a rush for the rest of the rooms in the region, according to officials of the Jacksonville Super Bowl Host Committee.

Yesterday, Patrick Duncan, director of lodging and accommodations for the host committee, disclosed that his group has 2,500 hotel rooms that it had been saving for fans from the two cities whose teams will be playing.

If, and it's a big if, hotels receive some cancellations and resell the rooms now, Duncan said, he expects prices in the downtown area to be as high as $600 a night. That's two to three times the going rate for hotel rooms in Houston and New Orleans during the last two Super Bowls attended by the Patriots.

Thus Jacksonville appears to be a landlord's dream market, temporarily.
"There is about to be a magic moment when thousands of football fans are desperately seeking a room here," said Randy Cooper, president of www.superbullrentalsbyowner.com, one of several companies that are busily signing up the owners of houses and condominiums who are willing to vacate them for a few days if the rent is right.
Cooper has more than 100 home-owning clients signed up and expects to more than triple that number this week as word of the room shortage spreads and the fans' frenzy to find a place builds. The expectations of would-be landlords are high.

Angela and Steve Hawley are among those who have paid $400 to advertise their four-bedroom Jacksonville house on Cooper's website. They're asking $4,000 a day with a four-night minimum stay. Best case, they're hoping, would be $20,000 for one week, while they vacation in Aruba.

But all prices are negotiable, and it's very much a renter-beware market, said Walter L. Williams Jr., president of the local Coldwell Banker real estate office and the host committee's official apartment rental agent.

"Some of the asking prices may seem unreasonable. Everybody got hyped up for a while, but some of our clients have reduced their rates," he said.

Williams' clients have 1,400 houses and condo units for rent. As of last week, only about 50 places had been rented. By yesterday afternoon, Williams said he had rented about 150 homes.

But the best strategy is to wait until the last few days, says Pierce, the Patriots fan in Nashua.

"I have seen room shortages and high prices at other Super Bowls in Houston last year and New Orleans in 2002," said Pierce. "A lot of people who have deposits on hotel rooms will back out, even though they'll lose the money, because they made reservations long before they knew who would be playing."

Maybe, but some travel agents say such cancellations may be offset by a last-minute surge of reservations from fans who found out Sunday that their team is playing. Consider that a week ago Boston travel agent Eddie Marsden of Netc Fawke Travel had only one confirmed Super Bowl customer: "And he was from Philadelphia."

Fans can always hope the rental market in Jacksonville crashes the way it did in San Diego in 2003 for Super Bowl XXXVII. In the months before that game, asking prices for two-bedroom condo rentals reached $65,000 a week.

But reality set in after the two teams turned out to be the Oakland Raiders, whose fans were able to find much cheaper housing along the highways between the two California cities, and the Buccaneers of Tampa Bay, a relatively small market that had experienced its own Super Bowl thrill by hosting the game in 2001.

Patriots fan Karen Cardoza is counting on people from other cities canceling their trips and creating hotel availability.

"All those sad Steelers fans will be staying home now," said the special education teacher, who lives in Providence. But one way or another, she insisted, "I'm going. Even if I have to sleep in my car."

Mayor David N. Cicilline and team owner Robert Kraft decided it would be better to wait until many of the star players were available to visit the city.

PROVIDENCE -- Residents might not have to pull out their parkas to participate in a Providence rally to honor the Super Bowl champions.

Karen Southern, press secretary for Mayor David N. Cicilline, said the decision to hold the rally then was made by Cicilline and Patriots owner Bob Kraft.

"A lot of the players have other commitments, like family commitments," Southern said yesterday.

Cicilline and Kraft decided that it would be better to hold the rally when many of the star players would be available.

"We are really excited that Bob Kraft and the management of the Patriots have agreed to bring the Lombardi trophy to our city," the mayor said in a statement. "Providence is New England's second largest city and has some of its strongest, most devoted fans. We are all thrilled to show our support for our team."

Kraft dubbed Rhode Island "home to some of our most loyal and dedicated fans," including the Patriots Fan of the Year, Karen Cardoza of Cumberland. "We look forward to bringing another Lombardi trophy to Providence this spring to share with the many wonderful [fans] in the Ocean State," he said.

Four to five thousand of those fans, still caught in the victory glow, were expected to show up at the Warwick Mall last night for an appearance by Patriots players, including Adam Vinatieri, who kicked the game-winning field goal. Vinatieri also paid a visit to the State House. A parade and rally in Boston on Tuesday drew an estimated 1.5 million fans.

She'll be at a birthday party today, but come game time, Carol Augustine will politely make her excuses and head home to Acushnet to watch the AFC Championship Game between the New England Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts.

What a day....what a win!! Haven't been able to sleep for weeks now and why should tonight be any different? This season has been so absolutely incredible..... I'm so emotional I can't even put it into words. All I can say is that being a believer and Having FAITH in this team is something that I take pride in. My loyalty is etched forever in ink on my hip...... (although I may be adding some Superbowl XXXVI reference now!!!!) Nobody deserved this win more than this team... They never gave up in the face of adversity and are the epitome of a TEAM. It will be hard to see them break up next year, but I'm not going to think about that now.....I'm just going to savor this win for a long time to come. I shed tears last night as I knew I would.... I'm just so proud of them and I can't wait to meet the boys at the Fox today....