South Florida Local News

As host of Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff,  Rob Stone has visited some premier college football environments.

He’s seen the iconic venues of Big Ten country such as the Horseshoe at Ohio State or the Big House at Michigan to the rolling hills surrounding West Virginia and the stockyards near TCU in the Big 12.

But the show has never been to the Sunshine State — until this week, when it will broadcast live from Memory Mall on the UCF campus. The Knights host Colorado at FBC Mortgage Stadium at 3:30 p.m.

“It’s about time we came to Florida,” Stone told the Orlando Sentinel this week. “It’s about time we get to promote some of these other brands in college football besides the typical ones we see every Saturday.

“There’s so much more to college football than just Ohio States, the Michigans, the Texas and Alabamas and the Floridas. You need to remember that all these other programs are part of this great fabric of college football, making it arguably the greatest sport on our planet.”

This is the second time UCF has hosted a nationally televised pregame show.

ESPN’s College GameDay broadcast live from campus as a precursor to the Knights’ top 25 matchup with Cincinnati on Nov. 17, 2018. UCF won 38-13 and eventually won its second straight American Athletic Conference title, earning a spot in the Fiesta Bowl.

Nearly six years later, UCF is in its second season in the Big 12.

Broadcasting from a new location allows the show to reach a new audience.

Step aside, Deion, this is UCF’s ‘Primetime’ moment | Commentary

“It’s always good for us to get to a new location and spread our gospel,” said Stone. “We’re still kind of infants in this game, and we like getting out and seeing new places.”

The two-hour show, which airs from 10 a.m.-noon, has been on the air for six seasons and features a college experts panel of Matt Leinart (USC), Brady Quinn (Notre Dame), Mark Ingram (Alabama) and Urban Meyer (Utah, Florida and Ohio State).

All three have deep ties to the game, with Leinart, Ingram, and Meyer having won a collective five national championships and two Heisman Trophies.

“It’s super humbling for me and the ego gets packed away,” Stone said of his castmates. “There is no ego on the set when you’re surrounded by national title winners Heisman Trophy winners, Mr. Notre Dame Brady Quinn. They’re all down-to-earth guys who love what they do and adore the sport.”

Reporters Bruce Feldman and Tom Rinaldi, and wagering expert Chris ‘The Bear’ Fallica provide additional coverage.

With the game against Colorado already sold out, a large crowd is expected to pack Memory Mall to catch the show. Grammy-winning musician DJ Khaled also will perform to add to the excitement.

“Let’s be honest. This is a two-hour commercial for UCF and the Big 12 and to a lesser point, Colorado as well,” said Stone.

The idea of UCF possibly hosting the show began a few weeks ago but was finalized after Colorado’s overtime win over Baylor. According to Rob Mikulicka, Fox’s director of remote studio operations, Orlando was among a handful of locations considered.

Mikulicka even spent time on campus last week, scouting possible locations to set up and meeting with school officials. Once it was determined that UCF would be the site, he was on a plane to Orlando on Monday morning.

“We were pinching ourselves and saying, ‘Can you believe we’re in Florida?’ We never thought we’d be able to do that,” said Mikulicka.

If UCF can ‘seize the moment’ on national stage vs. Colorado, that can pay dividends with recruits, too

This is the farthest south that the show has traveled.

Mikulicka and a crew of approximately 135 people began setting up the studio site while monitoring the path of an oncoming hurricane.

“Pivoting is a keyword for Big Noon Kickoff, but definitely, a hurricane was a new one,” said Mikulicka. “We went back to the drawing board of our plan and said what we could do safely up until the end of last night.”

Mikulicka spent time with the local weather center to gauge the storm’s impact.

While Central Florida wasn’t in Hurricane Helene’s direct path, increasing rain and wind gusts forced the crew to postpone work Thursday.

“We’ve dealt with weather. In week one, in Morgantown [West Virginia], we had about 50 to 60 mile-an-hour wind gusts that would pop up out of nowhere,” said Mikulicka. “So, on five minutes’ notice, we had to batten down the hatches. We have a lot of stuff, so we must ensure we’re safe.”

Weather aside, everyone associated with the show is expected to be a big crowd.

“They told me there are 8,000-10,000 fans [in Memory Mall] on gameday,” said Mikulicka. “We went back and watched [ESPN’s College GameDay], a previous show here, and the energy was insane. The 70,000 students are a huge bonus, and they don’t do these types of things often. So, we thought this would be the perfect place to step outside our normal playbook.”

Stone also sees Saturday’s show as the perfect opportunity for UCF to steal some of the spotlight from the state’s three big programs: Florida, Florida State and Miami.

“They’ve got a national two-hour pregame show coming to their town where their staff, university and student base can show off everything they have. I guarantee you that’s going to earn them a couple of recruits that will earn them some wins down the [line] and it might earn them a win on Saturday.”

Matt Murschel can be reached at mmurschel@orlandosentinel.com

UCF vs. Colorado

3:30 p.m., Saturday, FBC Mortgage

TV: WOFL-35

GULFPORT, Miss. — A South Florida financial adviser has been indicted in an alleged scheme to promote and operate an illegal tax shelter through which he stole some of his clients’ funds, federal prosecutors said Friday.

Stephen T. Mellinger III, of Delray Beach, conspired with several others to defraud the Internal Revenue Service in 2013 by promoting an illegal tax shelter, according to the indictment returned Wednesday by a federal grand jury in Gulfport, Mississippi, and unsealed Thursday.

Mellinger was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, aiding in the preparation of false tax returns, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and money laundering. If convicted of all charges, he could be sentenced to up to 68 years behind bars.

Court documents did not list an attorney for Mellinger who could speak on his behalf. An arraignment date has not been set.

Mellinger allegedly instructed his clients participating in the tax shelter to transfer money to a company he or his co-conspirators controlled in the amount they wished to claim as a deduction on their tax returns. The conspirators then returned the money to a bank account that clients controlled, subtracting a percentage fee that they charged for their services, according to the indictment.

Mellinger allegedly earned more than $3 million in fees from the shelter.

In addition, in 2016, the federal government seized funds from some of Mellinger’s clients who were engaged in a scheme to defraud health care benefit programs, including TRICARE, the U.S. Department of Defense’s health care benefit program, according to the indictment.

Mellinger conspired with a relative to take advantage of the seizure to steal some of the money that those clients had transferred and then laundered the money, according to the indictment.

Ultimately, he used some of the stolen funds to buy a home in Delray Beach, the indictment said.

By SCOTT BAUER, Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Friday that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name will remain on the state’s presidential ballot, upholding a lower court’s ruling that candidates can only be removed from the ballot if they die.

The unanimous decision from the liberal-controlled court marks the latest twist in Kennedy’s quest to get his name off ballots in key battleground states where the race between Republican Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris is close. Kennedy’s attorney in Wisconsin, Joseph Bugni, declined to comment on the ruling.

The decision came after more than 418,000 absentee ballots have already been sent to voters. As of Thursday, nearly 28,000 had been returned, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Kennedy suspended his campaign in August and endorsed Trump. Earlier this month a divided North Carolina Supreme Court kept him off the ballot there while the Michigan Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision and kept him on.

Kennedy filed a lawsuit in Wisconsin on Sept. 3 seeking a court order removing him from the ballot. He argued that third-party candidates are discriminated against because state law treats them differently than Republicans and Democrats running for president.

He pointed out that Republicans and Democrats have until 5 p.m. on the first Tuesday in September before an election to certify their presidential nominee but that independent candidates like himself can only withdraw before an Aug. 6 deadline for submitting nomination papers.

Dane County Circuit Judge Stephen Ehlke ruled Sept. 16 that Wisconsin law clearly states that once candidates file valid nomination papers, they remain on the ballot unless they die. The judge added that many election clerks had already sent ballots out for printing with Kennedy’s name on them.

Bugni had argued that clerks could cover his name with stickers, the standard practice when a candidate dies. Ehlke rejected that idea, saying it would be a logistical nightmare for clerks and that it is not clear whether the stickers would gum up tabulating machines. He also predicted lawsuits if clerks failed to completely cover Kennedy’s name or failed to affix a sticker on some number of ballots.

The Supreme Court’s four liberal justices along with conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote that Kennedy’s arguments weren’t developed enough for them to decide whether Ehlke erroneously exercised his discretion in keeping Kennedy on the ballot. They noted that Kennedy didn’t argue that Ehlke misinterpreted the law that says only dead candidates can be removed from the ballot.

“We emphasize that we are not making any legal determinations on our own regarding the claims made by Kennedy and we are not agreeing with the circuit court’s legal conclusions on those claims. We simply are unable to make such determinations, given the inadequate briefing presented to us,” the five justices wrote in six-page opinion.

Conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote in a one-page concurrence that while she doesn’t disagree with the five other justices that Kennedy’s arguments were underdeveloped, keeping Kennedy on the ballot will confuse voters and could tilt the outcome of the election.

“Voters may cast their ballots in favor of a candidate who withdrew his candidacy, thereby losing their right to cast a meaningful vote,” she wrote. “Ballots listing a non-candidate mislead voters and may skew a presidential election. In this case, the damage to voter participation in electoral democracy is real.”

The court’s third conservative, Annette Ziegler, joined Bradley’s concurrence.

The presence of independent and third-party candidates on the ballot could be a key factor in Wisconsin, where four of the past six presidential elections have been decided by between about 5,700 to 23,000 votes.

In 2016, Green Party nominee Jill Stein got just over 31,000 votes in Wisconsin — more than Trump’s winning margin of just under 23,000 votes. Some Democrats blamed her for helping Trump win the state and the presidency that year.