By TEDDY ALLEN, Journal Sports
Missy Setters has been on the Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl staff since 1996. She and her football-loving father made sure they didn’t miss the annual game once the family moved to Shreveport when she was a middle schooler, and she’s of course not missed one since she became the bowl’s executive director in 2006.
But she’s not really seen a game in recent years either. One year on her steps counter, it read she’d logged more than 10 miles on gameday.
“I’m usually all over the stadium and on the field; I spend very little time in the press box,” Setters said. “If anyone had looked for me at last year’s game, they’d have seen me under a poncho in the rain and not had a clue it was me — but I kind of like it that way.”
She can dodge the spotlight tonight too. That’ll be on Kim Mulkey, LSU women’s basketball head coach and guest speaker for tonight’s bowl-sponsored Kickoff Dinner, an annual event since 2010 and one to “get everybody ready for football season,” Setters said.
The Kickoff Dinner is at the Shreveport Convention Center. Doors open at 6; dinner will be served at 6:15; the program begins at 7. There are 20-25 tickets available while they last, each for $50, at the door for the packed event.
That’s not a surprise as the event’s first female keynote speaker is a six-time national champion as a player and coach. (Former Kickoff Dinner speakers Terry Bradshaw, Lou Holtz, Emmitt Smith and Marcus Spears can’t make such a claim.) She’ll speak for approximately 30 minutes, followed by a brief audience Q&A.
“We began making out our list of possible great speakers for this, and the discussion kept coming back to her,” Setters, a former member of LSU’s women’s golf team and sports information office, said. “She has an appeal that just transcends sports. And her appeal in this area, especially, you can’t really overstate it. Thank goodness her schedule and the Convention Center’s availability all worked out.”
Somehow, things have always “worked out” for the nation’s 11th oldest bowl, now 45 games old. It hasn’t been easy, but it’s been worth it, Setters said.
“I found out a while back that I had two stomach ulcers; I can’t imagine where those came from,” Setters said. “In this (bowl) world, everything changes so much from one year to the next. You can never settle in; it’s never the same. Especially with the way college football is changing so much.
“So we take a lot of pride in that, in our longevity,” she said. “To have seen the bowl start when I was a little girl, to see it go through ups and downs and still be here says a lot for our volunteers and our organization. The (Red River) Revel and the bowl started the same year (1976); I look at things like that and it instills a sense of pride in you and in our community.”
The bowl, she said, is still a non-profit and “belongs to the community. We’ve grown into an organization that does a lot of other events throughout the year, so we take a lot of pride in what we do year-’round and in the impact we have.”
One of the new events is the Radiance Technologies Innovation Bowl, an academic competition between schools and conferences affiliated with the bowl. Schools compete for a $25,000 grand prize by developing innovative approaches to a current research and development topic selected by Radiance Technologies. The vision was born last year, and Radiance Technologies “proved to be the perfect partner,” Setters said.
Speaking of partnering, if you want to become an I-Bowl volunteer, you can serve in one of five divisions and on one or more of the bowl’s 55 committees.
“Join the I-Bowl Foundation,” Setters said. “You’ll get your money’s-worth out of our fish fry and our crawfish boil alone. We have between 300 and 450 in the Foundation at any given time.
“I work with a great staff and with a great group of volunteers,” she said. “Everything we do, it’s all to try to put on the best bowl possible for this community, for our traveling fans and for our national audience.”
Army West Point and a representative of the American Athletic Conference (AAC) are scheduled to meet in the 46th Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl on Friday, December 23 at 2 p.m. The game will be televised on ESPN, which will be the 30th-consecutive year the I-Bowl will be televised on an ESPN network.
Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu
Photo courtesy Independence Bowl