Flying The Gator Skies

By Andy Staples, Tampa Tribune, Fla.

Feb. 5–GAINESVILLE — As he explained how speed helped win his University of Florida football team a national title, Coach Urban Meyer promised to make the Gators even faster.

“If you can run,” Meyer said Jan. 9, “I’m going to be sitting in your living room.”

In the past four weeks, Meyer has kept his promise. He has stormed the living rooms of high school stars throughout the nation, and it appears he may land the nation’s top-rated recruiting class for the second consecutive year.

But how does Meyer get to all those houses? Since the NCAA allows coaches only a few weeks for face-to-face meetings with prospects, Meyer can’t afford to spend hours, shoes in hand, waiting in an airport security line.

Fortunately for Meyer, Ross DeWitt doesn’t use a metal detector.

“You don’t have to take your shoes off,” DeWitt said, “if you don’t want to.”

DeWitt runs the aviation division for Florida’s athletic department. The former Air Force pilot logs 250 hours a year in the air ferrying Gators coaches and athletic administrators. DeWitt’s staff includes three other pilots — who each log about 350 hours a year in the air — and a mechanic. For short flights, DeWitt and his team fly a Beechcraft King Air, a propeller-driven craft that seats seven. For long hauls, they fly a 1998 Cessna Citation Bravo, a seven-seat jet originally designed to carry the big shots of the business world.

DeWitt, who flew private charters and for an engineering firm before joining Florida’s University Athletic Association in 1996, said he doesn’t see much difference between the CEOs he used to carry and the coaches and administrators he carries now. Most of the time, they catch up either on work or sleep during the flight.

“They’re all about the same,” DeWitt said. “They’re all doing their job.”

Though NCAA rules forbid coaches and school officials from revealing which players they are recruiting, flight tracking Web sites such as FlightAware.com provide some helpful hints.

For example, the Citation landed in Teterboro, N.J., at 11:39 a.m. on Jan. 25. Later that day, Justin Trattou, a star defensive lineman at Ramsey, N.J., told Rivals.com that Meyer, co-defensive coordinator Greg Mattison and tight ends/tackles coach Steve Addazio had just visited.

At 12:12 am on Jan. 26, the Citation landed at Gainesville Regional Airport. The coaches had come home to play host to official visitors scheduled to arrive in a few hours. Those visitors included Muskegon, Mich., defensive back Ronald Johnson. Johnson left Gainesville on a commercial flight two days later. Meyer wasn’t far behind.

According to FlightAware, the Citation took off from Gainesville at 5:17 p.m. on Jan. 28 and landed in Muskegon at 7:53 p.m. The next day, Johnson — who announced Sunday that he intends to sign with Southern California — told recruiting services Meyer had visited him shortly after he returned from Gainesville.

Greg McGarity, the associate athletic director who oversees the aviation program, said UAA employees realize the planes are “a luxury.” But since almost all of Florida’s teams recruit nationally and since the NCAA has squeezed the period in which coaches may meet with prospects in almost every sport, McGarity said all of Florida’s coaches need the planes to compete.

“Sometimes, in-home visits or evaluations are inflexible,” McGarity said. “To get from point A to point B quickly is essential in our operation.”

The planes do give Florida coaches an advantage. For example, University of South Florida coaches fly commercial or drive to see prospects.

Florida State coach Bobby Bowden drew criticism in 1998 from then-state Sen. Charlie Crist for taking 48 trips on a state-owned plane in 1997. Those trips cost $105,000, and taxpayers paid more than $60,000 of the total because the state didn’t charge FSU for a share of the fleet’s administrative costs.

McGarity said the UAA, which operates without state dollars, keeps its aviation costs down by renting the planes to the university. If President Bernie Machen needs to take the Citation to a meeting in Washington, the school must pay the athletic department. According to the UAA’s 2006-07 budget, the department spent $309,766 on administrative costs for the aviation division in 2005-06, but it made $85,840 on the King Air and $99,089 on the Citation. That’s a net expense of $124,837 for a department with an annual operating budget of more than $47 million.

DeWitt said the actual cost of flying the planes is cheaper than the cost of a charter — which the school still uses to transport teams to away games. The King Air and the Citation cost an average of $3 to $4 a mile to operate. To charter a similar Citation costs about $2,000 an hour.

DeWitt, who broke his wrist late last month, hasn’t been able to fly for the stretch run of this year’s football recruiting season. He’ll be ready for next year, though DeWitt doubts he can persuade Meyer to begin recruiting more exotic locales such as Hawaii — which Meyer did recruit as Utah’s coach. DeWitt can imagine the requisition order he’d have to file for that one.

“We’ll have to add more fuel tanks,” he said with a laugh.

Reporter Andy Staples can be reached at (352) 262-3719 or astaples@tampatrib.com.

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Copyright (c) 2007, Tampa Tribune, Fla.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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