The University of Florida can raise a glass to another national title: Best party school in the country. The Gators, known for wild celebrations following national championships in football and basketball, delightedly took the party title away from West Virginia University and beat out the University of Mississippi and Penn State University, in the Princeton Review survey of 120,000 students released in late July.

The University of Florida has made the Top 20 party school list for the past 15 years, but has never been Number 1 until now. A university spokesman said the party school reputation comes from the school's athletic successes. The Gators won two national basketball championships in 2006 and 2007 and one national football title at the end of the 2006 season.

"The fact that we have three national championships in two years is probably a major contributing factor," spokesman Steve Orlando said. "We know our students like to have a good time." He defended the school's academic climate, noting Florida's incoming students have a weighted grade-point average of 4.1 and an average SAT score of 1,300. Florida also came in first this year in the category of students who pack the stadiums.

In recognition of these sterling accomplishments, the fun-loving folks at CollegeLuggage.com would like to invite all of the Gator fans to visit our website and see the newest version of our Gator Chillin' Bowls.

No party is complete without at least one Chillin' Bowl. Made of nylon, vinyl and neoprene insulating foam, they weigh less than 1.5 lbs. empty. Each bowl will comfortably hold a large quantity of your favorite chilled beverage for hours with NO exterior condensation. We even include a chromed steel bottle opener in its own little holder on the side. With the Gator Chillin' Bowls on hand your parties are sure to be chompingly good fun for all.

Beginning nine years ago, Victorinox® Travel Gear by Swiss Army Brands developed a strong, durable yet lightweight line of carry-on luggage items for the seasoned traveler. The objective was to match the strength, durability and packing capacity of hard-sided luggage with the ease of handling and lower carry weight of soft-sided luggage.

Their solution was the Werks Traveler "WT" Line. Each of these Victorinox® Werks Traveler travel bags is made of 1280 Denier ballistic nylon fabric stretched over a hollow tubular steel frame. The zippers, handles and hardware are all rated for more than three times the industry-approved standard for travel. The wheeled bags travel on in-line skate wheels designed to handle the shock of stairs, the damage of "droppage" and the disdain of luggage handlers at airports across this Great Nation of Ours.

In a comparison test, our Swiss Army wheeled bags were rated as 30% lighter than other comparable brands. With the built-in expansion gusset, this means you can carry much more in the same space and still meet the airlines' weight maximum for carry-aboard luggage. Combine this with our "Carry with Confidence" product guarantee and there are multiple sound reasons to switch to Swiss Army luggage.

What's more, we embroider your favorite school logo on each bag to help you sport your school name with pride and locate your baggage more quickly. Swiss Army Luggage: Saving you extra charges for checked bags while giving you more freedom when you travel!

Collegiate Luggage .com - Remembering Uga VI

The beloved mascot of the University of Georgia, Uga VI, passed away at the age of nine on June 27th, 2008. Anybody who knows anything about the sport of college football knows that this, according to the UGA faithful, is the premier mascot in all of college football (and maybe even all of sports).

I personally had a chance to meet this fine animal and even pet and take a picture with him as a guest of the UGA Alumni Association in their skybox suite during the halftime. He was exceedingly friendly and actually seemed to enjoy the attentions of the loooong line of fans waiting semi-patiently to meet him and take a picture together.

With me that day was a friend, Matt, who had recently been displaced from his home in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. He had lost his car, house, tools (he is a carpenter and movie set-builder), and all of his possessions. My wife gave up her ticket to the game so Matt could come with me and forget his troubles while watching Georgia's football team win a home game. He wrote to me upon hearing about his favorite bulldog with these words:

"It was because of your generosity [inviting me to the game] in a time of great tragedy for me that I had a chance to meet Uga. Who would have thought that something as simple as encountering a friendly white bulldog would make such a difference? That afternoon meant a great deal to me - I will never forget it."

Uga VI, who would have turned 10 on July 22, will be buried in a marble vault in the Southwest corner of Sanford Stadium with his predecessors.

Just two short months ago in our March 25th Collegiate Luggage blog article we noted with minor alarm/resignation that Delta Airlines and American Airlines were now charging $25 to check a second piece of luggage on any and all domestic flights.

We then called your special attention to our Victorinox® WT-22 Deluxe Wheeled Travel Bag, which is the acknowledged largest available bag that may be carried aboard most domestic airlines. In the two months since then, other airlines have adopted the $25 fee for a second bag, making our WT-22 a smart investment since it would save you $50 per round trip when carrying it aboard instead of checking it.

Now, American Airlines has a new policy designed to make air travel just a bit more expensive: A $15 fee to check your first bag, followed by a $25 fee for each additional checked bag. And it appears that the other airlines will follow suit.

So, let us once again point you to our WT-22 Carry-On and remind you that this is not only some of the strongest, best-designed, lightest-weight luggage you could invest in, but it will pay back a "dividend" every time you wheel it aboard the plane.

Collegiate Luggage's Victorinox® Travel Gear by Swiss Army Brands lets you proudly sport your favorite school's logo on your luggage, and now helps you save serious buckaroos on your travel budget.

Two wonderful things for one reasonable price.

CollegiateLuggage.com: Where complex financial issues are dealt with in five paragraphs or less.

This May the U.S. Government will begin sending out $600 Economic Stimulus Rebate checks (or $300, depending on the circumstance) to taxpayers everywhere in our Nation. From extensive reading and interviews we have been able to determine that "The rebate that will be sent out in May 2008 is a credit to the taxes you'll owe on 2008 income, but it is a new credit, so you don't have to 'pay it back'." In other words, this $600 is an "advance" on a new credit that will be presented on 2008 tax returns when you are filing your taxes in 2009 for the fiscal year 2008. Got that?

Setting aside the warm, fuzzy "Pay it forward" nature of this rebate, we citizens have been given the fiduciary responsibility of spending these monies in such a way as to do the most good for ourselves and our Great Nation. Rather than just letting the money burn a hole in your pocket, we at CollegiateLuggage.com strongly urge you to invest at least a portion of the rebate in Swiss Army Brand™ travel and business gear.

First of all, our products represent a good investment because they don't depreciate like most luggage items. Each item we sell comes with a Lifetime Guarantee. Second, with airlines now charging $25 per bag to check more than one piece of luggage aboard the aircraft, our WT-22 Deluxe Wheeled Bag earns back nearly 10% of the purchase price of $275 every time you travel because it carries the most stuff of any item of luggage that may be wheeled aboard domestic aircraft. None of our competitors can make this claim. Carry it with you on 6 round trip flights and it will have paid for itself!

So, when your rebate arrives, proudly convert it into Swiss Army collegiate luggage, knowing that your actions have, in a small-but-meaningful way, been helpful to yourself, your family, your community and your grateful Nation. It's what the Swiss would do.

CollegiateLuggage.com - Where every now and then we wave our own flag.

This particular post concerns the way we decorate each item of Victorinox® Swiss Army luggage before it is sent to our customers.

Each of the deluxe travel bags, backpacks, duffel bags and cases in our line is made of ballistic nylon which is a very tough but flexible fabric designed to withstand the rigors of airline travel and especially airline baggage handlers. You could say that Victorinox® has deliberately over-engineered the product in anticipation of the world of mistreatment that awaits it.

When the time comes to embroider your favorite school logo on the luggage, we use a specially designed embroidery table to hold the product in place while a computer program moves it along a pre-designated set of horizontal and vertical coordinates beneath the embroidery sewing "head". This is done while the actual embroidery head remains stationary, giving us the tightest-possible weave and the best-looking logo reproduction with no pinching or buckling of the design.

Our process of embroidering one item at a time means that your Swiss Army purchase is decorated individually, to order. By contrast, regular embroidery equipment is intended to decorate "thin" fabrics used in polo shirts, caps, sweaters or jackets, and makes use of 12-head embroidery tables to simultaneously run up to a dozen items at one time.

We use all-polyester non-reactive-dyed thread along with a special backing substrate for our embroidery so there is no pull-through, no color bleed and no color fade. Our embroidery designs are intended to last as long as the luggage items they adorn.

Take a moment to examine the close-ups of the various school logos shown on these web pages. You will see that our embroidery coverage is solid, with no gaps or loose stitches. We take enormous pride in the work we do on our luggage and on our luggage decoration. For this reason, when you carry Swiss Army's collegiate luggage products you "Carry With Confidence™".

CollegiateLuggage.com

Disaster... you've lost your bag!

Not to worry. With select Victorinox® Travel Gear by Swiss Army Brands luggage items you receive the benefit of the free Swiss Tracker™ Bag Tracking Program. With Victorinox®'s bag tracking program, we help to reunite you with your lost bag anywhere in the world for free.

Here's how the Swiss Tracker™ program works:

Each bag bears a unique tracking ID number on the bag's ID tray and a 24-hour a day, 365 days a year phone number. If someone finds your lost Victorinox® Travel Gear bag, they call our the worldwide customer service hotline number and Using your unique ID number, we will work with them to reunite you with your bag. We will notify you, arrange pickup, and then arrange for delivery of your bag -- at no cost to you!

The program is activated via a registration form in the bag.

The Swiss Tracker™ Program is available for the following travel gear products:

• Mobilizer® 24 - 30340201 / 30340203 / 30340208 models
• Deluxe Garment Mobilizer® - 30341701 /30341703 / 30341708 models
• Paratrooper - 30341801 / 30341803 / 30341808 models
• Collapsible Gear Mobilizer® - 30340401 /30340403 / 30340408 models
• Louvre 17 - 30322001 model
• Wainwright - 30321901/30323101 models
• Empire 17 - 30322101 model
• Big Ben - 30322601 model
• Parliament 17 - 30322901 model

Look for the Swiss Tracker™ Globe icon on our travel gear product pages to indicate which items offer this unique and free additional feature.

CollegiateLuggage.com: Where science is more than just a seven-letter word.

I read a fascinating article in my April 25th issue of THE WEEK magazine, regarding the remarkable health of alligators - they almost never get sick. They have super immune systems that ward off virtually every virus and bacteria, and scientists are now trying to figure out their secret, to create treatments that could be used by humans.

Researchers found that when they exposed alligator and human blood samples to 23 types of bacteria, the gator blood killed them all, while the human samples destroyed just eight. "Alligators tend to get into tussles and fights", Lancia Darville, a researcher at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge told USA Today. "They have torn limbs and scratches that are exposed to all of this bacteria in the water, yet they are never infected."

It appears that gators do not rely on customized antibodies to destroy micro-invaders, but have proteins in their blood that kill off everything that seems remotely alien to their system. "They don’t need to be exposed to any microorganism such as bacteria, viruses, fungi [bulldogs, war eagles, blue tick hounds, elephants, wildcats, gamecocks or commodores] for their bodies to respond against them," Darville says. As soon as the chemical structures of these key proteins are understood, she says, they can be examined for their potential as human cures.

Here at CollegiateLuggage.com we believe that gators love the taste of our travel gear. Is it a factor in their amazing immune systems? Try our business and travel gear for yourself and you be the judge.

CollegiateLuggage.com - If it's about college stuff, we're game.

Speaking of game - I imagine that by now everyone has had plenty of time to discuss last Monday's amazing NCAA Men's Basketball Championship Game. I already have one article in my weblog about the Game focusing on the importance of little things (i.e. free throws and the making thereof) but today I have another: The meaning of "Rock Chalk Jayhawk" and the accompanying chant.

I should fully disclose that as of my writing this blog entry our program does not have Kansas University as a member school. But I have been so taken with their school chant (not to mention their amazing performance during the Tournament) that I have decided to go after KU for our Swiss Army Brand Collegiate Luggage program. Just keep your eyes on this website to see if we get 'em.

Back to the subject at hand: The world famous Rock Chalk Chant evolved from a cheer that a chemistry professor, E.H.S. Bailey, created for the KU science club in 1886. Bailey's version was "Rah, Rah, Jayhawk, KU" repeated three times. The rahs were later replaced by "Rock Chalk," a transposition of chalk rock, the name for the limestone outcropping found on Mount Oread, site of the Lawrence campus.

I had never heard this chant before last week. Now, I can't get it out of my head. The wording is not really that big of a deal, but the way it is chanted is almost magical. I get chills. Listen [MP3] for yourself and see if you don't agree.

Again, CollegiateLuggage.com congratulates the Jayhawks of Kansas University on their 2008 National Basketball Championship and reminds their students, alumni and fans to stay tuned to this space - blue Swiss Army luggage is just a heartbeat away.

CollegiateLuggage.com - Where painful memories and happy times take turns.

Like many fans of collegiate sports I spent the past few weeks avidly watching the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, savoring the March Madness and marveling at the levels of pure athleticism evident in each game. This was, in fact, the first time that all four of the #1 seed teams at the beginning of the Tournament all made their way to the Final Four contest in San Antonio. So it promised to be yet-another fun ride. I didn't have a particular stake in the contests so I watched for fun as Kansas and Memphis played for the National Championship.

In the end, Memphis was undone not by a better team or better coaching, but by a bunch of missed free-throws during the final seconds of regulation play. This absolutely made me crazy. To fully understand my frustration, I must tell you an anecdote from my high school years (we are talking the 1960's) in a time before there was Gatorade.

I was the manager of our high school's basketball team. This meant that I took care of towels and equipment, made sure that the basketballs were all properly inflated, helped tape the player's ankles, got things ready before practice and cleaned up afterwards. All of the little stuff that helps make the team go. We had a great coach and a team that had won the New Jersey State Championship just one year earlier (prior to my starting high school).

So, imagine my dismay when our regular season record in my first year with the team was 12-8. And we lost all eight of these games by a combined total of 21 points. (That averages to less than 3 points per game). If a game went into overtime, we lost. If we had the lead going into the last 90 seconds, we lost. If we were making a legitimate comeback during the last 90 seconds, we lost. And the source of this awful, sad, frustrating, dispiriting sequence of disappointments was missed free-throws.

That's right, free-throws that weren't made were the difference between victory and defeat for one whole season. Our players easily shot 100 practice free-throws (also known as 'foul shots') each, every day. Most of them had been playing basketball and shooting free throws for 6 or more years by the time they stepped on the court in our team uniform. We didn't have any 'bad' free-throw shooters - just good and better.

Do the math with me: At least 100 practice foul shots per day times at least 300 days per year = 30,000+ practice shots per year. Multiply by an average of six years = 180,000 practice free-throws during their young lifetimes. I know they did the work because I was often the one spotting for them and keeping count. Every starter on our team could sink 10 for 10 with his eyes closed. But when the clutch moment came and we needed those couple of points to tie or (heaven help us) win, we got zilch, zip, nada, nathan. I used up every wish I had earned, I prayed to everyone and everything I could think of including the patron saint of comfortable sneakers and still we lost.

So, of course, watching the final couple minutes of the NCAA Championship Game last Monday evening I couldn't help but notice that the Memphis players were apparently having the same problem that my high school team did a scant 40 years earlier. As I mentioned before, I had no real stake in this game but by the end of regulation my heart was racing and my mouth was dry and for a short-but-seemingly-endless moment I was back in time watching the wheels come off. I was in basketball fan hell.

So, my condolences to the Memphis team and fans, my congratulations to the "Rock Chalk Jayhawks" and my fair warning to all of you: When life presents you with a free-throw, you had better make it count.