By Zach Purgason

08/29/2008

Tampa Bay, Florida will be playing host to more than just the NFC and AFC champions this season.  The Par and Poker Challenge for Charity will be held there during Super Bowl Week with more than 30 celebrities attending.  This is the second annual running of this tournament and will be co-hosted by former NFL linebacker/safety Seth Joyner and NCAA Division 1 golfer Andy Walker.

The donations raised will benefit the Joyner-Walker Foundation Inc., a non-profit organization headquartered in Tempe, Arizona that offers personal lessons to struggling high school and college students. Other Celebrities attending include Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Ozzie Smith, NFL Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor, Super Bowl quarterback Jim McMahon and Olympic Swimming gold medal winner Edwin Moses.

As the name would suggest, the event will be broken up into two, equally entertaining and unequally athletic tournaments.  The first will be an 18-hole golf challenge at TPC Tampa Bay, the site of a spring PGA Champions Tour event each year.  The second will be a No Limit Texas Hold’em poker tournament the proceeds from which will benefit the Joyner-Walker Foundation Inc.

What is even more interesting about the poker tournament is that three seats to the 2009 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. The Par and Poker Challenge for Charity will take place on January 29^th of next year and will be open to the public to register or to simply be a spectator.  Registrations for the Golf Tournament are $1,500 for gold and $500 for the poker tournament.