We’ve never been real good with numbers but the way we figure it, 220 (teams) multiplied by 15 (players per squad) equals 3,300. Add to that 220 (teams) multplied by two (parents per player), which is 440, and you get 3,740 (people).

Roughly speaking, that’s the combined total of players, coaches and parents who will be hitting youth soccer fields all over Tampa Bay this weekend for the Score at the Shore 2008 Winter College Invitational Tournament.

And we didn’t even count the dozens of college soccer coaches who plan to scout the event.

The event’s title is a little confusing. These aren’t college teams. These are youth soccer teams - competitve youth soccer teams with some of the best young soccer players in the country between the ages of 13 and 19.

Not everyone who participates is from out of town, of course, so let’s say between 3,000 and 3,500 people are headed to Tampa Bay this weekend from as far away as Chicago and Michigan to participate in the most massive youth soccer tournament that local traditional media either doesn’t know about or just doesn’t care to report.

Just to be clear, we didn’t expect sports reporters to pick up on it. No, this is as much about business as sports. VisitTampaBay.com estimates that this tournament will yield 7,000 room nights for Tampa Bay hotels and motels. Add to that restaurant meals, retail shopping excursions, movies, sidetrips to the beach and and you’re talking a decent chunk of change for a local economy that needs all the help it can get.

Last September we got our dander up after reading a half-baked, myopic editorial, which suggested that having spent too many years and too mnay millions of tourist-tax dollars building a tennis stadium for the Saddlebrook Resort, Pasco County should burn off more tax dollars “soliciting a consultant to determine whether it can afford to invest its future tourism tax proceeds in additional amateur sports facilities.” The ink-stained wretch who committed this tripe also insisted that it “would be wise to commission a comprehensive study of whether Pasco can grab a significant share of the competitive sports promotions market.”

Grab? Hell, it’s coming to Pasco despite the neglect of people who ought to be hard at work encouraging more and the stunning ignorance of local journalists who should have figured this out about 10 years ago.

Take a look at the boys and girls game schedules for this weekend’s tournament and you will notice references to Holiday #1, Holiday #2, Holiday #3 and Holiday #4. Those are soccer fields located in Holiday. Pasco County to be exact.  Good job Pasco Parks and Rec. Department, right? Wrong. This is happening despite that agency, which has been anything but helpful. As a matter of fact, we’re told private money bought the paint to line the fields after the county refused. That’s pathetic.

What really needs to be studied here is why so many people, who ought to know better, insist upon waffling over whether Pasco can compete for competitive sporting events. That and whether this weekend’s visitors will be so disappointed by the condition of the Holiday facilities that future tournament organizers will avoid West Pasco in favor of places like Polk County, which has been wisely investing and improving its amateur athletic facilities since 1995.  

If West Pasco hotel and motel owners (yes, the ones who pay tourist-tax dollars to build a tennis stadium on the opposite side of the county) realized that their own county government was an impediment to bringing these games to West Pasco, they might have shown up at the Parks and Rec. Department with pitchforks and torches in hand. We think they should anyway and demand that Pasco stop fooling around and start investing in new and existing amateur athletic facilities for the good of the county’s tourist economy.

Scanning the fishwrapper last week, we found this bit of local color printed three pages deep above the fold. Monday, February 4, 2008 must have been a slow news day for this thing to make it past the local section, yet we haven’t been able to stop mulling it and we think we’ve finally figured out why.

Though we suspect it was inadvertent by Mr. Abel and his employer, this little rattlesnake yarn is its own blunt commentary on how a lot of us still relate to our natural environment in early 21st century Florida. Virtually every paragraph of this thing is pregnant with the superstition, phobia and folklore that still trump science when we forget ourselves.

Some critters just suffer from bad public relations. Wolves, for example, used to catch hell. They were vilified, demonized and hunted to virtual extinction across much of North America. Turns out they’re actually not baby-eating, canine criminals but relatively benign social creatures that play an important role in various ecosystems.

Wolves have been rehabilitated. Snakes haven’t.

As we read in Mr. Abel’s report, snakes are still evil and unworthy of our trust. Three - count ‘em, THREE - Pinellas County deputy sheriffs rolled to a house in Ozona on a Sunday afternoon where a four-foot rattlesnake (reported as seven feet) lay peacefully coiled under a cart that hadn’t been moved in years. The snake undoubtedly thought the cart was permanently in place as a refuge where he could rest unnoticed and undisturbed. The snake thought wrong and soon found himself exposed to sunlight and human hysteria.

The piece of Abel’s story that lingers most vividly with us is how a sheriff’s deputy prodded then “blasted away” with a shotgun at this poor beast as the voices of children wafted over the fence. The woman of the house was much relieved by the snake’s slaughter. Remember, kids, snakes are evil!

Look, we’re no better or wiser. We recoil at the site of a serpent, too. We don’t like snakes poking about the house, slithering through the garden or coiling under bushes. They make us nervous and, yes, we’ve had a hand in killing a few. But they are, afterall, native Floridians just working to survive. Can’t a working viper get a little respect?

Turns out the Eastern Diamondback is actually a rather docile fellow. And big ones, like the one dispatched by PCSO, tend to hold back their venom when they bite. It’s the little ones that deliver the big dosage. Still, who the heck wants a four-foot rattlesnake in the yard, especially with kids on hand? We’re all for humane treatment of animals but let’s not get crazy.

Fair enough. Instead of blasting away with a shotgun, though, how about calling a snake getter? Really. The Pinellas Sheriff’s Office ought to know about these people.

There used to be a guy who would go almost anywhere in Pasco and North Pinellas to pick up any kind of snake. If it was poisonous, his service was free because snake venom has value. This dude was a bona fide snake lover. He didn’t cotton to people who killed snakes. That was several years ago when gas was cheap and antivenin was in short supply but local volunteers are still out there and willing to come to the rescue of Mr. Snake and the horrified homeowner. Write down their numbers and hang them on the fridge.

Live and let live.

We’re over this whole recession debate.

Every business guru with an opinion and a hole to express it seems obliged to answer whether we are, are not, or soon will be in a recession. As debates go, this one is strictly between people with incomes immune to economic gravity. That would include media mavens and business gurus. For the rest of us, the question was settled about the same time “House For Sale” signs began sporting Spanish Moss.

Recession? Does Bin Laden shit in the woods? Just reading and thinking about the local economy is enough to make you downright downhearted these days, unless you’re able to put it all in proper perspective. For us, proper perspective landed in our inbox the other day disguised as a press release from the Florida chapter of the Challenged Athletes Foundation (CAF). We learned by reading it that CAF has teamed up with the Gasparilla Distance Classic Association to revive the 15K elite wheelchair race.

If you think you’ve got challenges in your life, subtract a major limb or two, rinse and recalculate. Imagine a view of your future, and the world, as a 15-year-old kid confined to a wheelchair. Now, that’s challenging. But life is for living and you’ve got to make the most of it, which is where CAF comes in by helping people with physical disabilities find fulfillment through physicial fitness and competitive athletics.

The 15K elite wheelchair race used to be a fixture at the annual Gasparilla Distance Classic. In 1997, according to CAF, more than 75 of the world’s top racers competed here. But race organizers wanted to give more money from the event to local charities, so they stopped awarding prize money to the wheelchair race winner. As CAF tells it, anyway, that decision put an unintended end to the 15K elite wheelchair race in Tampa. Until now. The prize money is back. $10K to be exact. And so are the big-time wheelchair racers. Two dozen of the country’s best to be exact.

When we use terms like “eilte,” “big time” and “country’s best,” don’t get the idea that we’re just being charitable. We aren’t. These people are serious athletes who train and compete for real. They can flat out kick anyone’s ass in their events - physically disabled or not. And that’s precisely what we think is so supremely cool about CAF and the 15K elite wheelchair race in Tampa this weekend. High-end athletes tend to inspire people by example, especially young people. Physically disabled high-end athletes tend to inspire physically disabled young people to recognize that determination, competitive fire and perseverence can produce some damn fine results.

Susan Harmeling, the Executive Director of the Gasparilla Distance Classic Association, said “competitive wheelchair racing on the streets of Tampa (will make) the community more aware of how participating in events like Gasparilla’s 15K or 5K can provide those with physical challenges a tremendous boost in self-confidence and purpose in their lives.”

Through CAF’s “Race for a Reason” program, able-bodied runners who register to race in any of the four Publix Super Markets Gasparilla Distance Classic Race Weekend events (this Saturday and Sunday Feb. 9 & 10), are eligible to join Team CAF Gasparilla 2008. By pledging to raise a minimum of $100 each for CAF, these runners will help the Wheelchair Division become a permanent element of all future Gasparilla events.

But you don’t have to be a runner or even an athlete to join. Just go here and do what you can. It’s worth the effort.

Lew Friedland, founder of CAF’s Florida Chapter, said, “CAF is here to help those individuals reach goals they never dreamed they could achieve. We’re finding they can actually accomplish anything they put their mind to, and it is impressive to see.”

Amen to that. It’s enough to make you forget the recession.

We heard it again today on right-wing blowhard radio. Twice. From Rush Limbaugh and some Glenn Beck wannabe who lectured America about how it depends on oil for prosperity and, therefore, needs a president who will blow off global-warming nuts and drill for oil in every remaining wilderness area and unspoiled coastal zone.
 
Somehow they never seem to get around to addressing the demand side of the equation and how damn near every rig in existence is already out there punching holes in the earth. Afterall, there is a good reason why the price of a single share of Transocean, Inc has climbed from about $20 at the beginning of 2004 to about $150 today. It’s called the law of supply and demand.

These radio reactionaries drone on as though alternative fuels are a left-wing fantasy, with the exception of corn-based ethanol, which requires a disproportionate amount of energy to produce and raises the cost of food.

We’ve been ranting and raving for days about how alternative energy actually represents a huge economic opportunity for Florida and how we ought to be concentrating on that rather than liberal-vs-conservative red herrings. So, we’ll leave it there.

Before we do, though, we came across this alternative and renewable fuel locator map for Florida. We thinks it’s cool, so we’re sharing. Happy motoring!

Did you know Pasco County is on its way to becoming a national leader in alternative fuel production? That’s sort of exciting when you stop to think about potential growth in global demand for alternative energy supplies over the next 20 or 30 years.
 
As long as it’s almost New Year’s Eve and we’re all officially licensed for a few days to dream about fresh starts and better times to come, we’re imagining what Pasco and the rest of central Florida might look like as a globally recognized center of an as yet unborn alternative-energy boom.

Think Silicon Valley for alternative energy.

Why not here? We might be on the cusp of a global revolution in alternative-energy innovation not unlike the revolution in computer technology of the past three decades. If so, we’re bound to see some big winners emerge on a scale comparable to Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, et al.

So, we ask, again, why not here? Hell, no one knew the way to San Jose before 1980. Do you know the way to Dade City?

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services announced the other day that they received 215 grant proposals this fall for renewable energy technologies under the DEP’s Renewable Energy Technologies Grant Program and the DACS’ Farm-to-Fuel Grant Program. Both programs are designed to stimulate capital investment in and promote statewide utilization of renewable energy technologies.

The DEP received 139 grant proposals seeking more than $200 million in grant funding to go along with almost $700 million in private money for renewable energy projects. The proposals include technologies that use biomass, solar and hydrogen energy. The state has just $12 million to award but it’s not really up to the state to pick winners and losers. The market will do that through private capital once the ball gets rolling. The point is to get the ball rolling here in Florida.

And it just might be happening.

For example, Dade City is on its way becoming America’s biodiesel fuel capital after Agri-Source Fuels, LLC converted an old juice plant there into a big biodiesel production facility capable of producing 120-million gallons per year. Reported in typical manic-depressive fashion, traditional media whipsawed us first with ebullient headlines followed by the blues.

New businesses rarely go as well as their builders predict from the start. Incurable, effusive optimism is one reason why some entrepreneurs overcome long odds to survive and thrive. They learn as they go, as we all do, and they figure out how to succeed. Read past the headlines and you can see that’s true for Agri-Source. It was cranking out 40,000 gallons a day in November. More important, it was selling every drop.

All Florida needs to do is stay friendly and nurturing to this breed of innovative capitalist, help it overcome as many obstacles as possible, and before long we might just have ourselves a cluster of up and coming alternative-energy companies capable of incubating even more innovation and investment around it.

Forget all the partisan pissing and moaning about whether global warming is real. To heck with status-quo preservationists in Washington and their self-dealing politics. We’ve got the makings of a promising new industry putting down roots right in our own back yard. Its market could be huge one day. All that would mean is big profits, enviable public revenue and general prosperity from a clean and sustainable industry.

Cheers and Happy New Year.