While Oregon and Ohio State prepared to battle on the field, local businesses braced for the rush of customers who came for the kickoff of the National Championship game.
Hoss Rice, service manager at Gator’s Dockside, said the sports bar prepared for the crowds by stocking extra of just about everything.
“We put extra staff on, brought people in early, bought a lot more food,” said Rice, who has worked at Dockside for 10 years.
Despite the prep, Rice said business wasn’t any busier than it would be for a regular football game.
“We’ve been here for 12 years,” he said. “It’s nothing new. If the Gators were in it, then we’d be a lot busier.”
Andrea Montoya, a 21-year-old UF zoology senior, and Rodrigo Sarmento, a 21-year-old UF microbiology senior, showed up around 7:45 p.m. when the wait for a table was an hour and a half to two hours, Rice estimated.
Luckily for Montoya and Sar
mento, they had friends inside who had already snagged a table.
“We send them out first,” Sarmento said, “then we come out after they deal with the wait.”
Montoya said they decided to watch the game at Dockside after their friends recommended it for the projectors, multiple TVs and good food.
Meanwhile, at Salty Dog Saloon, the atmosphere was a little calmer.
Ben Raulerson, who has worked at the Midtown watering hole for eight years, said he wasn’t expecting much of a crowd.
“We’re not really a sports bar, per se,” Raulerson said. “Games like this — you get some of a crowd but not that great of one.”
Like Rice, Raulerson said because the Gators weren’t playing, it was a pretty normal night for a football game.
“We just have a couple of extra staff,” he said. “That’s really the only difference.”
Raulerson said the bar usually needs a couple extra hands at the beginning of the semester anyway, when students have more free time.
Salty Dog didn’t run any drink specials in honor of the game.
Raulerson added that he didn’t expect any one menu item to sell out more than usual.
Frank Eastwood, a manager at Ballyhoo Grill, said they were naturally prepared because of the restaurant’s large size, though they did need to stock a little extra bar food.
“Chicken wings, nachos — that sort of thing,” said Eastwood.
Eastwood said he did see an increase in business for the night.
“Yeah, usually it slows down about 8:30 or 9 around here,” Eastwood said. “But we got a nice little push in.”
Ballyhoo was around two-thirds full for the start of the game, which Eastwood estimated to be about 200 people.
At Mother’s Pub and Grill, around 150 people stood and perched on barstools as wait staff wove with alternating empty and full pitchers of beer when the game was tied 7 to 7.
Anthony Kurtz, head of security for Mother’s, said to prepare for the game crowd, staff stocked the cooler full of beer and scheduled the most experienced employees.
Mother’s had its regular gamenight specials of $7 buckets of beer, 40 cent wings and 50 cent tacos.
Kurtz said the crowd was normal for a gamenight, and a bunch of regulars milled around in the restaurant.
One regular, Mike Bell, is tied to the sports bar in ways that surmount his seven years of regularly watching games there.
He helped lay the flooring inside and build the outdoor patio, where he now stood under the glow of the outdoor TVs with his American bulldog, Jigsaw.
“I come here for cheaper prices and a friendly atmosphere,” he said. “Definitely the friendly atmosphere.”
[A version of this story ran on page 1 on 1/13/2015 under the headline “"]
A crowded bar watches the National Championship game between University of Oregon and Ohio State University in Mother’s Pub and Grill on West University Avenue on Monday night.
