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Unflagging Support

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By MARK HOLAN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 13, 2007

PORT TAMPA - South St. Patrick Street looks like the United Nations of football.

Nearly a dozen flags for almost as many college and pro football teams flutter from front porches.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers, sure.

Florida Gators, you bet.

But other colors fly, too.

LSU Tigers.

Nebraska Cornhuskers.

Denver Broncos.

This is the first football season people have lived in the South Tampa Square development, where crews are still building single-family homes and town houses.

Nobody knows for sure who put out the first flag, said Marc MacKinnon, who runs an Internet design company from his house on St. Patrick.

The Tampa native flies a Bucs flag.

'We are all tightknit and like to rib each other about each others' team,' said MacKinnon, 35.

Colorado native Sean Fransk, 29, hoisted his Broncos flag.

'I've had more people say, 'Go Broncos,' than say mean things,' the surgical device salesman said.

Sales rep Lydia Graff works from a model house on the street where the flag outside reads Inland Homes.

'We've got a young crowd here,' she said. 'They are sporting their colors for being the alums they are. I've never seen the closeness of neighbors like this.'

Fransk and MacKinnon don't expect anyone on the street to escalate the fan frenzy by adding more team decorations, as happens in a commercial promoting the National Football League.

'We're proud of our neighborhood,' Fransk said. 'We don't want it to get too crazy.'

Reporter Mark Holan can be reached at (813) 835-2102 or mholan@tampatrib.com.

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