Florida offering Gators fans a first trip to The Swamp through awesome promotion

Seven lucky Florida Gators who have never been to The Swamp for a football game before can win that experience — all expenses paid — through a new promotional contest, the program announced Monday.

From the release on the My First Chomp in The Swamp promotion:

The University Athletic Association, in partnership with UF Online, is looking for seven Florida football fans who have never visited Ben Hill Griffin Stadium for a game.

If you, or someone you know, fits this description, sign up to win an all-expense paid trip to Gainesville for that individual and one guest (one hotel room, two round-trip flights, and two tickets to the game) to see one of the seven home football games this fall.

To enter, complete this brief questionnaire, which takes less than one minute. The 2017 home schedule promises to be one of the best in program history, with Southeastern Conference games against Tennessee, Vanderbilt, LSU and Texas A&M and non-conference contests versus Northern Colorado, UAB and Florida State.

Winners must be 18 or older, and cannot be student-athletes or immediate family members of such. The contest runs from July 10 to July 31, and winners will be selected on August 1 and announced on August 7. (You can see the official rules for more details, including language vague enough to make me think that they’re sending one winner to each of the seven home games this fall.)

While there are things to be somewhat skeptical about in regards to this promotion, it strikes me on first blush as a brilliant one: It’s a low-cost means of getting fans from the far-flung provinces of Gator Nation into The Swamp for one of the most thrilling experiences one can have as a Gators fan, and a way to generate a lot of goodwill for the University Athletic Association for doing so. It also strikes me as a promotion molded largely by Florida athletic director Scott Strickin’s brain, given that he was and is known as an innovative marketer.

Will you be entering this contest? Do you know someone who should?