OPINION | WALLY HALL: GPS beats a map if you know what you're doing

TAMPA — This is an easy city to navigate if you have a great co-pilot who knows how to use GPS.

Today was not an easy day to navigate as it was the first day I was not with Tom Murphy or my wife.

I left my hotel in plenty of time to make the final Arkansas Razorback players availability and took the right exit off I-275 that runs through this city making everything 15 minutes or less away.

Immediately after exiting I took the wrong turn and ended up on a street a block from the street I thought would take me right to the team hotel on the bay.

Only the street I thought I needed (I was using a thing called a map), Franklin, was a one-way going the wrong way so I turned on Tampa Avenue and creeped along with the traffic until I panicked and turned left to see if Franklin was still a one-way.

It was.

I turned left on it, then took the first left and immediately took another left, which was for pedestrians and not cars.

I got out of there as fast as I could, turned back onto Tampa Avenue, and realized that was the street I needed all along and that I would make a jog and then a right to get to the hotel, just in time for the last 10 minutes of the press conference.

The coaches joint press conference was 45 minutes later at a hotel by the airport so I left immediately and somehow drove right to it.

When the press conference was over it was supposed to be two right turns to my hotel, but after 20 minutes of going in every direction but the right one I found a street I recognized and got back to my hotel.

I learned a couple of things today, navigating this city is easy if you have help and my hotel is less than a mile from Raymond James Stadium, which I drove by, and have no idea how to get back there.

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