South Florida Football Team to Travel via Vespa Scooters in 2009

College football as a whole was able to sustain itself quite nicely in 2008, despite the overall down economy. Some analysts even proclaimed college football to be “recession proof”; thanks to full stadiums on college campuses throughout the country.

Despite the financial optimism around the sport, schools have begun to cut back, even in hotbeds, like Florida, where it is arguably the state’s most popular sport.

Last year, Florida State University introduced ticket packages for Tallahassee Community College students to buoy its flagging attendance. The University of Florida has decided not to boost ticket prices, a rare occurrence for defending national champions and will look to scale back in some areas. The University of Miami will take buses to in-state road games to save money as well.

In order to keep up with the state’s Big Three, the University of South Florida has announced that its football team will conduct all of its travel on a fleet of Vespa scooters.

“This is our way of continuing to prove that we are a major school in the state,” said USF Athletics Director Doug Woolard. “We can cut back just as much and in some cases even more than the other big guys.”

The school conducted a study determining that purchasing the fleet would be equivalent to the airfare for the school’s road game at Indiana alone. “We expect a good value for the investment thanks to the Vespa’s high production quality and superior fuel economy,” explained Woolard.

The Bulls will use the scooters to travel from its campus in Temple Terrace to Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium, home of the NFL’s Buccaneers, as well as its road games to Indiana, Syracuse, UConn, and Pittsburgh.

Thanks to the Vespa’s speed topping out at 55 mph, it will take the team in excess of 23 hours one way to travel the 1,260 miles to get to its most remote destination in Storrs, Connecticut. Even so, the team is not worried about it.

“Man, I take all my courses online anyway, so I don’t care if we have to miss class,” explained quarterback Matt Grothe. “I just wish they’d let me take my truck.”

The team will transport its equipment in a used semi-truck that was retrofitted to run off of the pure, unbridled fury of head coach Jim Leavitt. The school is already creating a list of things that enrage him in order to make sure it will have plenty of angerfuel to complete the long trips to the Northeast and Midwest.

The funding for the modifications to the semi was provided in the form of a grant from media conglomerate Viacom. It hopes to one day power all of the broadcasts of its Comedy Central property off of the rants of Lewis Black alone.