West Virginia’s Aloha Bid Really a Bowl of Confusion

West Virginia football fans experienced alternate euphoria and disappointment Saturday night, when it was erroneously reported that the Mountaineers were headed for the Aloha Bowl in Honolulu.

It started with a report by United Press International, was compounded by an overzealous anchorman at Cable News Network, was given further, if brief, life by the Associated Press and survived through Sunday in The Times and other newspapers.

Of course, as we all know now, USC is going to the Aloha Bowl, not West Virginia. But before everybody got the story straight, a lot of hope had been created in West Virginia.

“It’s unfortunate,” said Richard Davis, a senior producer at CNN. “But I’ll tell you one thing. We found out a lot of people back in West Virginia watch CNN. Also that, this time of year, they daydream about going to Honolulu.”

It was never more than a dream. Kevin Mulligan, spokesman for the Aloha Bowl, said that West Virginia was never more than a backup choice and that the bowl had never encouraged anybody to think that West Virginia was going.

“We were going for a Pac-10 team, preferably a California team, from the beginning,” Mulligan said. “West Virginia, Colorado or Virginia--they were strictly secondary choices.”

He said that Mackay Yanagisawa, the game’s executive vice president, had talked to Mike McGee, USC athletic director, a week ago and had told him that if USC beat UCLA Saturday, USC would be “a viable option.”

Nevertheless, according to UPI, which hadn’t spoken to either bowl or West Virginia officials, the Mountaineers had been invited to Hawaii. That report was retracted an hour later Saturday night but, clearly, not in time.

It happened that a CNN sports anchor had looked down at the wire machine during a short break and spotted the first UPI bulletin. He reported it on the spot. “His, uh, zeal kind of cost us there,” said Davis. It was three hours before CNN could make a correction.

AP, which had never included West Virginia in its bowl lineup, quickly sent a report saying only that CNN had reported it. And so it appeared in The Times, under a listing labeled “Tentative Bowl Lineup,” and elsewhere.

Fred Schaus, athletic director at West Virginia, was upset by the foulup. “I have no idea where that came from,” he said. “There was never any official contact between us and the bowl. How in the hell these things get started . . . it’s not professional and it just upsets people.”

Davis said one of the calls he had gotten Sunday was, in fact, from Schaus. “He said we ought to be more responsible, that kind of thing,” Davis said. “I guess we disappointed a few Mountaineers.”

Folks at UPI were not especially helpful in explaining how this happened. An unidentified editor in New York said: “At some point there was a possibility of West Virginia going. But it all depends on who wins this game or that game. It gets very tricky.”

Probably not that tricky, he was told. He said, “I’m telling you all I know.”

Meanwhile, some folks in West Virginia were not too surprised at the report. Jerry Wimmer, sports editor of the Charleston Gazette, said that in the preceding week UPI had mentioned West Virginia in connection with the Independence and Liberty Bowls and then the Aloha Bowl.

“Seemed they were more interested in West Virgina going to a bowl than West Virginia was,” Wimmer said.

After all this, USC’s opponent isn’t set, either. Alabama is expected to be there, assuming that Tennessee beats Vanderbilt Saturday and wins the Southeastern Conference title. But if Tennessee loses and Alabama shares the crown with LSU, the Sugar Bowl committee would decided between LSU and Alabama. That would leave USC without a team to play.

Hey, how about West Virginia?