Provencher Family Endows Football Scholarship

By Bill Bunker

Jim Provencher never entered Doak Campbell Stadium to the roar of a crowd, but the Orlando attorney can nevertheless claim a piece of FSU gridiron history.

"I was the first captain of the first FSU rugby team," said the 1974 business school graduate. "We had a great time, traveled all over the country."

Rugby, a club sport, is not part of FSU's athletic program, so, on autumn weekends, the Provencher family can be found at Campbell Stadium where they have held season tickets for years. It is an FSU family, through and through.

Jim, a Pi Kappa Alpha, and Cindy, a Pi Beta Phi, met as students and married soon after graduation. Daughter Janine, a 2002 graduate in communications, was Pi Phi president and a member of the Garnet and Gold Girls. She works for Edelman Public Relations in New York City. Son Sam, who has seen every home football game since he was five months old, according to his father, entered FSU this summer as a freshman.

While Jim was the first to receive his degree from FSU, Jim's father, Robert, and his brother, Rob, also earned degrees from Florida State. Robert was a Navy pilot who earned a graduate degree in retirement. Rob got his English degree following a Vietnam-era Navy hitch. A third brother, Dave, graduated from Central Florida, but long ago joined the ranks of Seminole fans.

A sense of family is one reason the Provenchers endowed a football scholarship at FSU. Both moved around extensively as children and found a home at Florida State. Jim came to FSU directly from Japan where his father was stationed his last two years in high school. Cindy, the daughter of a Florida Highway Patrol officer, was "raised in every small town in Florida," according to Jim. She graduated from high school in Ft. Pierce.

"Florida State football is a family affair for us," Jim said. "We've had the same seats forever with the same group of people sitting around us. It's been a great way to spend time together."

Cindy agrees. "Our kids were practically raised at Doak Campbell Stadium, and all the people who sit around us help raise them. I love the university. I'm up there every chance I get. I was an only child when I went up there, and I found a house full of sisters."

Cindy has remained active in sorority affairs and has served as a national officer for Pi Beta Phi.

The family feeling also contributed to the decision to endow a scholarship. "The scholarship is a big deal for us. My family has had a lot of success as a result of being a part of the Florida State family. We've received a lot more than it's cost us, and now it's payback time," he said.

There's also a business benefit derived from networking through FSU connections. After graduating with an accounting degree, Provencher worked as a CPA before attending Stetson Law School, which he completed in 1981. He practices personal injury law, a member of the "percentage bar," as he affectionately calls it.

"We don't advertise, so networking is very important," he said. "The connections I've made all over the State of Florida flew right out of those relationships I made in college."

Provencher's assessment of Florida State's progress and future prospects leads him back to the family theme. "I look at Bobby Bowden as the titular head of the extended FSU family, and that's why all of this has worked for us," he said. "When we talk about family, I mean all the Seminoles all over the country. We're going to the Notre Dame game this fall, and we'll run into people from everywhere. He sets the tone for that, the way he treats people. I think it flows through the organization and the team. He's always done that, and I think that's why we've been so successful. The Florida State story must be one of the best, brightest and most brilliant stories that college football has ever seen."

Although he recognizes the urgency to improve facilities and increase scholarship endowments before Bowden retires, he views a Bowdenless future with optimism. "It will be an opportunity to continue what we've been doing, as long as we pick the right people to do it. I think we'll have a lot of options, and when change occurs it will be good, because I'm confident it will be done at the right time, in the right way and not until Bobby is ready," he said.

Meanwhile, Provencher looks forward to closer scores and more exciting football at FSU in an improved and expanded ACC. "There was a time when we were just concerned with how bad we would beat most of our opponents," he said. "Now, we don't know who's going to win. I'm looking forward to it."

Perhaps it's the rugby attitude, which values the sport's social aspects as much as results on the field. Cindy Provencher expressed long-suffered reservations.

"Rugby parties can be loud and raucous," she said. "The lullabies we sang our children were FSU songs, sorority songs and rugby songs. The rugby songs didn't work." But, the other two worked well enough to produce a new generation of Seminoles to continue the university's growing family tradition.

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