College Football : Fiesta Bowl Now Has the Juice to Possibly Attract the No. 1 and 2 Teams

The Sunkist Fiesta Bowl appears to be buying its way into football tradition, with its $4-million bid for the top two college teams--$2 million apiece for top-ranked Miami and second-ranked Penn State if they remain undefeated. But becoming a major bowl may not be as easy as signing a check, although that’s certainly a start.

First of all, the chance to match the Nos. 1 and 2 teams in a bowl without a conference affiliation could be a one-time thing. The Orange Bowl, for one, which yielded the national champion last season, isn’t particularly alarmed about the prospect of a bowl outside the four “majors” getting a title game. Let them have this one.

Said Dan McNamara, executive director of the Orange Bowl: “Well, what we’re really talking about is a very rare opportunity when there are prospects, even though it’s still midseason, of being able to put two teams together that aren’t conference affiliated. Now, if opportunity presents itself, we wouldn’t mind putting up money to get a better game than we ordinarily get. But even if we had $10 million to pay, we couldn’t put Penn State and Miami together.”

Nor could the others. The four major bowls, Orange, Sugar, Cotton and Rose, are all locked into conference affiliations. In the Orange Bowl’s case, that means it could offer a $2.4-million bid to either Penn State or Miami, but not to both. One spot is reserved for the Big Eight champion.

Enter the Fiesta Bowl, in the second year of corporate sponsorship, to break this window of vulnerability. “We’ve thought about a championship game for 15 years,” said Bruce Skinner, Fiesta Bowl executive director. “But we’ve never had the possibility of staging a national championship game because we’ve never had the money.”

Thanks to its sponsor, it does now. Ordinarily, it offers $1.1 million to each team. But Sunkist, with a special superfund, has allowed the bowl to nearly double the money in the event of a national championship game.

The money, plus the New Year’s Day exposure, makes this a compelling situation, although Miami stands to lose $600,000 in travel expenses if it ventures beyond the Orange Bowl.

We may get a chance to see if pride has a price, since Miami almost certainly would want to play a game for a national title. Beating probable Big Eight representative Oklahoma again holds little appeal, for Miami, the fans, or even Orange Bowl officials who hated the lopsidedness of their first meeting.

Will the Orange Bowl, or any other bowls, get into a bidding war for the top two teams? Will a sponsor’s desire to be linked with a championship game throw the bowl pay-out schedule all out of whack? Not as long as the Rose Bowl is limited to champions from the Big Ten and Pacific 10, the Cotton Bowl to the Southwest Conference champion, the Sugar Bowl to the Southeastern Conference champion and the Orange Bowl to the Big Eight champion.

And will the Fiesta Bowl, or any other newly endowed bowl, move in on this expensive turf? Not until two independent teams are left atop the ratings, undefeated and untested. When’s the last time that’s happened? As far as that goes, it hasn’t happened yet this season.

Some conference schools may grumble over the independents’ ability to wheel and deal. But here’s the flip side: Unaffiliated Penn State went through five undefeated regular seasons under Joe Paterno without winning a national championship.

The Nittany Lions, who play a lot of East Coast rivals, are annually accused of having a soft schedule. Even winning the Orange Bowl in 1968 and 1969, finishing undefeated, couldn’t boost them over the hump.

In fact, Penn State won its only national championship in 1982, the year it lost to Alabama. Presumably, the closeness of that score--42-21--certified the arrival of Penn State to the big time. What to make of this year’s undefeated team, which just demolished the Crimson Tide, 23-3?

Miami, with a 7-0 record that matches Penn State’s, is playing it coy about a possible meeting. As star defensive tackle Jerome Brown was about to begin a TV interview, Miami Coach Jimmy Johnson appeared before him, waving his hands frantically. “No bowls!” Johnson said. “Don’t say anything about the bowls.”

Said Johnson, whose team is preparing for rival Florida State: “When you start talking about bowls at this time of year, you really open yourself to an upset. And I’m not looking to have this team upset by reading the paper about where they might be playing in a bowl game.”

College Football Notes

Bowls are interested in teams other than Miami and Penn State. A dozen bowl scouts will be at the Ohio State-Iowa game Saturday, most ever to see a Hawkeye home game. Among them is the Orange Bowl, which wouldn’t mind having a Big Ten or Pac-10 co-champion. The Orange Bowl really likes Washington, if the Huskies become co-champion. . . . It’s in writing: “You can print this,” Purdue Coach Leon Burtnett said, “I will never resign from Purdue University.” Of course, he won’t have to. He’ll be fired first. He has confirmed that a $450,000 buy-out will make it easy. Purdue is 1-6. Burtnett had been involved in reinstating a player who was eligible by conference rules but not by school rules. The profs don’t like him, never mind his record.

From the Dept. of Why He’s Called Ironhead: Pittsburgh running back Craig (Ironhead) Heyward, and his university, have been sued for his beating a former student with a crutch in a dormitory hallway last year. The student was trying to break up a fight between Heyward and his roommate, Zeke Gadson. The former student, Matthew Black, charges that the university was negligent because it failed to “provide Black with a safe place to live.”

Alabama Coach Ray Perkins on Penn State: “The key to their football team? They’ve got big, really fine offensive linemen. They’re the fastest Penn State team we’ve played, certainly.” . . . Just so nobody would forget: After Colorado upset Nebraska last week, 20-10, the Folsom Field scoreboard remained lighted for more than 48 hours after the game. . . . Now that Oklahoma’s Brian Bosworth has clammed up, the Big Eight Conference calls have been to Colorado nose guard Kyle Rappold, who says things like: “My position is like being a fire hydrant at a dog show.” Boz, come back. Say something.