<p>How Florida cashed in on college football</p>
<p>College sports are a bigger business than they've ever been. Here's how the Florida program became this industry's most admired corporation. </p>
<p>(Fortune Magazine) -- Things are heating up at the Swamp. That's what they call their stadium down here in Gainesville, Fla. And the University of Florida Gators football team - defending national champs - hasn't lost a game on its home turf in more than two years.</p>
<p>On this sultry September evening, Florida hopes to avenge its only loss last season by routing the Auburn Tigers the same way they crushed the Tennessee Vols a couple weeks earlier. Very soon, 90,000 screaming fans will turn the stadium into an orange-and-blue thunderdome. But now it's time for the Gator Walk. </p>
<p>Hundreds of Florida faithful are in a face-painted frenzy as the suit-and-tie-clad players slowly make their way, single-file, from buses parked on University Avenue to an entrance behind the Swamp's north end zone. Meanwhile, from a second-story office attached to the stadium, a handful of older men and women observe the scene in air-conditioned comfort. And although they may be more reserved than their fellow fans outside, they're every bit as passionate. In fact they couldn't be more invested in the team's success. </p>
<p>"Step up here and get a good look at our boys," says Ben Hill Griffin III, motioning me to the window. Griffin, 65, is a second-generation citrus and cattle baron who favors ostrich-skin boots. His father's $20 million in donations to the university in the 1980s made his family name synonymous with Gator athletics (the Swamp's official name is Ben Hill Griffin Stadium at Florida Field) and kicked off an era of major giving among Florida boosters. </p>
<p>Griffin III recently gave $2 million to help triple the size of the weight room his father built for the school - a.k.a. the Ben Hill Griffin Training Center. </p>
<p>Griffin and the other seven-figure donors in the room - the lawyer who funded a new soccer stadium; the hospital honcho who bankrolled the baseball complex; the gas-station mogul who paid for the aquatic center - are "distinguished directors" of the Gator Boosters, a private foundation that raises money for the University of Florida athletic department and likes to call itself "the team behind the teams." </p>
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