We are pretty excited. Can you believe it's already been ten years? I reflect being back in the stands the very first year of this game as a fan and thinking where this game is going to be in the future. The first year was lightning in a bottle, two top 20 teams and that was the start of the Boise BCU rivalry that has grown over the past few years.
I was fortunate to come on board the second year, just got married, got this job with a little company called ESPN and started in late October and I strutted on that field in late December, 15 degrees, looking at empty frozen seats and going, what the heck have I gotten myself into here.
After the third year, we obviously needed a change. We have done well with tickets but what can we do to make this a better event. Collaboratively, we put our minds together and said hey, we need to do something special. Let's honor the Armed Forces, got ESPN to sign off on that and within a week after that announcement, Bell Helicopter stepped on board and became our title sponsor. We have had a fabulous relationship the last several years, now on board for next year as well. We could not be more proud of what they have done to enhance this Bowl game.
The last seven years, a lot of great memories on the field between the teams. A lot of things we do during the time outs of the games and at halftimes, we create some very special memories for the fans and the players who are the Wounded Warriors that we have at the game. We have created additional awards like the Great American Patriot Award that we will do at half time once again and I will get into that in a second.
But a lot of special memories the last seven years and we are excited about this thing and together with Air Force and Rice, perfect for what we are all about, two teams. The first one, Air Force, second in the nation in running this year, they are young, they have 18 or 19 kids from Texas. And you have got Rice on the other side with pretty much 90 percent of their team from Texas, and they are very young, only seven seniors on their team and they finished their year quite strong winning five of their last six and four in a row to finish the year. We feel they are going to give us a great game and we look forward to it very much.
Tickets, we have about 2,000 tickets left at this point. They are going quite well, both teams are taking care of their allotments. We have also had great a rush on our military tickets. I don't know if everybody knows, but our corporate partners are required to buy military tickets for the families to attend the game for free. We probably have 12,000, 13,000 tickets outs there just because of that program.
So the stands tomorrow should be more than half full with military families to be honored, so we are really looked forward to that.
THE MODERATOR: Obviously next year we have Navy here, a Mountain West team. Can I add fuel to the fire and say a rematch for Air Force next year?
BRANT RINGLER: I think Air Force would relish that for sure. You'd have to talk to Coach about that. We would always love to have a matchup like that. That would be phenomenal, but probably not. We'll see what happens.
We do want to point out a couple of things in regards to what we have done this year. We always like to say we are more than a Bowl game. We started a new program called the Armed Forces Merit Award and partnered with the Football Wives Association. You see the trophy in the back. Our first recipient this year was Nate Boyer, a long snapper for the University of Texas.
We thought this award was something we wanted to begin this year to honor people that have served our nation and have come back and given back to football, people, organizations. There are several conferences that do things for the military, as well but we thought it was a perfect match with our Bowl game with this award. We have something special and we hope it will continue to grow and thank you very much.
Our game tomorrow, want to share a couple of things with you that we will be doing. Starting in the morning we have great festivities outside the stadium. It's overflowing from the area we originally designed it for. And we have a pregame concert; I want everybody to in the stadium early because we are having one heck of a pregame show, and obviously the Rice fans are going and they are special.
We also have a dual jump team, the Wings of Blue and the Silver Wings of the Army jumping together. Dana Bowman will be jumping with them; he's a double amputee. And we are bringing in a 1,500 square foot American flag, one of the largest you'll ever see.
We also have the National Champions Rifle Drill Team, J.P. Elder Middle School, which is a middle school here, will be on the field doing that. And then throughout the game we will be honoring different people. We are doing a home giveaway and a $3,000 presentation to Operations Finding Homes, one of our partners.
And at half time we have some special events, too. We have a Great American Patriot Award recipient thanks to Armed Forces Insurance. We have General Norton Schwartz, which is the 22nd Air Force Chief of Staff just recently retired will be receiving the award. Following that General Whistler from the Marine Corps will be inducting over 125 recruits into the military, and then we have a very special Wounded Warrior tribute.
We have over 300 family members with Wounded Warriors at our game that we will be hosting in the south end zone thanks to the Air Power Foundation here locally, hosting with food and drink and everything. They are going to bring about 100 Wounded Warriors out on the field from half time, and it's not just from Afghanistan and Iraq; it goes all the way back to Vietnam, Korea. We have about 15 to 20 World War II veterans that will be with us, as well. It should be quite impressive for us to honor them.
But we are excited, excited about all the military and Armed Forces elements we have before the game and obviously the game itself, these two teams will put on a great show, you already know that.
没有评论:
发表评论