Retailers Swamped After Gators' Victory

By MICHAEL SASSO The Tampa Tribune

Published: Jan 10, 2007

TAMPA - No one, not even the police, were sure how heated the competition for Florida Gators national championship apparel would get.

So, about 2 p.m. Tuesday, two Tampa police officers were working a detail at Heads & Tails, a college apparel and memorabilia shop on West Kennedy Boulevard in Tampa. The officers stood guard just in case some overeager fans came to blows over scarce official locker room T-shirts, replicas of those worn by University of Florida players after their victory Monday night.

The police presence may have been unnecessary.

Fighting "only happens with FSU fans," said a decidedly partisan Heads & Tails shopper, Ana Wallrapp. "We're civilized."

On Tuesday, people started showing up before dawn at shops to get their UF merchandise. In Pinellas Park, the owner of Gator Haven on 66th Street arrived at her store about 5 a.m. and found people waiting in line. By 3:30 p.m., a Gator Haven employee had made one trip to pick up Gator merchandise from Gainesville and was en route there again, co-owner Maggie Sloat said.

A big seller in stores was the official locker room shirt from Nike. It appeared to be in short supply in the Bay area, as some shops that don't carry Nike products were unable to get it.

At Heads & Tails, store manager Karen Chastain saw dollar signs once UF held up the national championship trophy.

Rather than waiting for Nike to send a shipment of the T-shirts, Chastain's sister, Linda, jumped into a sport utility vehicle Tuesday morning and darted off to Nike's printing plant in Orlando. When she arrived back at Heads & Tails about 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, about 20 people were waiting in line.

Customers were snatching up the 432 T-shirts as quickly as Heads & Tails employees could lay them out on tables. One UF graduate, John Peppes of Rochester Hills, Mich., was in Tampa on business Tuesday and dropped by Heads & Tails three times between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. hoping the shirts would arrive.

"I'm looking for the actual national championship shirt, hot off the press," said Peppes, who finally got his shirt shortly before he had to catch a plane. "It's a little bit different than buying it off the Internet."

Another hot seller at local stores was an unofficial national championship shirt made by Tampa shirt maker Smack Apparel. Smack is not licensed to make UF shirts, so "UF" and "Gators" do not appear anywhere on the roughly 3,000 shirts the company distributed to Bay area stores on Tuesday. Shoppers either didn't mind or didn't care.

The shirts did have the Gators' blue and orange coloring as well as an irreverent dig at the Ohio State Buckeyes. The game, the T-shirt reads, was a "total butt kickin' of those Suckeyes."

Reporter Michael Sasso can be reached at msasso@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7865.