BOWLS 85-85 : ROSE : Hayden Fry Is Worried About Line : The Buffet Line, That Is; So He’ll Keep Iowa on a Leash

Well, it’s that time of year again. The Big Ten Conference football champion is coming to town for the Rose Bowl and everyone can’t wait to smother the team to death with some good ol’ fashion Southern California hospitality.

Is everything ready? How about an update on that 40-pound slab of steak tar-tar, the one shaped like the state of Iowa? It’s ready? Good. And what’s the word on Heather Thomas? Is she going to meet the Iowa boys at the airport in a bikini or what? Somebody double-check that.

OK, everyone remember, the Iowa team is going whale watching on Wednesday. Or is it Thursday? Whatever, Disneyland called and it’s all set--the Seven Dwarfs have agreed to meet the team at the base of the Matterhorn at 8 o’clock sharp Friday morning, but don’t dawdle because they have to get back for that all-the-livestock-you-can-consume buffet at noon.

Football practice? Well, OK, but make it quick. “The Tonight Show” tapes at 5:30 and you know how Ed McMahon gets if you’re five minutes late.

How many more days until the Big Game, anyway? Seven? Man, that’s just not enough time. Is there any way we can move the game to Lincoln’s Birthday this year?

Yes sir, those Tournament of Roses folks sure know how to throw a party. For a visiting Big 10 team, coming here for the holidays is not unlike visiting a favorite aunt who persists in pinching your cheek with one hand while stuffing peanut butter cookies down your throat with the other.

As one Big Ten observer put it, the Rose Bowl people have “just killed us with kindness.”

And that’s just the problem, they say. You don’t have to remind Big Ten folks that they’ve lost 14 of the last 16 Rose Bowl games. But they wonder how anyone can concentrate on a game when someone is constantly shoving finger sandwiches in their mouths.

By game time, they say, their guys feel more like snuggling up on a couch next to a bottle of bicarbonate of soda.

And that’s why Iowa Coach Hayden Fry, whose team plays UCLA in the Rose Bowl, is making a stand. His 10-1 team still has a shot at the national championship and he swears he’s not going to lose this game in a buffet line.

In perhaps the most drastic approach ever taken by a visiting Big Ten coach, Fry has thrown a net around his team and will keep his players away from almost all of the pre-bowl hoopla. The Hawkeyes, who are practicing in their heat-controlled domed stadium back in Iowa City, aren’t even flying out here until the day after Christmas. The team will have one, half-hour session with the media the next day and that’s it. Socially, the Hawkeyes will only be allowed to attend the Big Ten Banquet of Champions. Oh yes, the players will have only two days after the game to do what they please.

No question, this game is serious business. The guy who said bowl games were supposed to be fun hasn’t been in a conference that has lost 14 of the last 16. Fry said he learned his lesson after his team belly-flopped in the 1982 Rose Bowl. It seems the Hawkeyes never took off their party hats in that one and were duly shellacked by Washington, 28-0.

If you’ll recall, that was the year they tipped the state of Iowa toward the west and sent nearly half the state’s population spilling into the lobby of Rose Bowl headquarters, the Huntington-Sheraton in Pasadena. This year, Iowa will hole up at the Industry Hills and Sheraton Resort in, of all places, Industry Hills.

It’s no joke. Big Ten people are convinced there’s a distinct advantage for the Pacific 10 team in the Rose Bowl, especially when the opponent is a home team such as USC or UCLA, which has been the case in 11 out of the last 16 years.

It has something to do with wide-eyed Big Ten players being swept up with thoughts of swimming pools and movie stars while players on the local team gag at the very thought of going to Disneyland again.

“It’s probably that we’re just coming from such a distance,” Iowa Athletic Director Bump Elliott said. “Back here, there’s snow on the ground. That in itself is a big change. It’s a celebration of sorts. That’s what the Big Ten has to guard against. You really have to be on your toes.”

Those from the Pac-10, of course, aren’t swallowing it.

“I really don’t see any validity in that thinking,” said former USC quarterback Mike Rae, who called the signals in the 1973 Rose Bowl win over Ohio State. “For the Rose Bowl, there’s 106,000 people in the stands and it’s on national television. I don’t see why they can’t get ready for the game.”

Others will tell you the Pac-10 has been winning for most of the last 16 years because its teams have been more innovative on offense while the Big Ten, until recent years, had been plodding along with an offensive philosophy first chipped out on stone.

Of course, there are some facts that tend to ruin the fun for everyone. Since the two conferences began their Rose Bowl series in 1947, the Pac-10 only leads the series, 20-19. The Big Ten, in fact, won 12 of the first 13 Rose Bowls.

All that means little to Hayden Fry, who wouldn’t even bend the rules this year and participate in the traditional beef-eating contest at Lawry’s Restaurant.

“I don’t think Lawry’s beef is as good as Iowa beef anyway,” Fry said last weekend.

Besides, Fry saw all the buffet lines he could stomach in 1982. “We had some linemen that probably gained 20 pounds,” Fry said. “I’ll bet (former lineman) Ron Hallstrom weighed 325 pounds by the time of the game. You can go back as many times as you want at those buffets.”

Iowa’s hibernation is a cause of dismay to the Rose Bowl entertainment committee, which is worried that the Hawkeyes will succeed and spoil the party for years to come.

“What worries me is that they’ll win the game, and for the next 10 years it will be that they won because they came out here and didn’t do anything.” said Jack Pallon of University Entertainment, which organizes activities for Rose Bowl teams. “It’ll be hard to fight that. . . . In a sense, it’s a shame they can’t partake in some of these things. It’s just different here than in some parts of the country. They ought to see those things. It’s part of growing up.”

The Big Ten team is offered quite a selection.

Here’s what would have been on the agenda for Iowa: Lawry’s. Disneyland. Santa Anita Race Track. Queen Mary and Spruce Goose Tour. Whale Watching. Huntington Library. Getty Museum. Norton Simon Museum. Balboa Bay Club and Pavilion Queen Cruise. Magic Mountain. Magic Castle. Universal Studios. Rose Bowl float-decorating tour. Kiwanis Club Luncheon. Trips to Laker and Clipper games.

The Rose Bowl folks apply no pressure to participate in any of the activities.

“It’s just a menu,” Pallon said. “You can order what you want.”

Pallon thinks the team would have plenty of time to mix business and pleasure if it would only reserve an earlier flight. It was once written in the Rose Bowl pact that Big Ten teams would arrive in California no later than Dec. 19. They also were bound to stay in the regal Huntington-Sheraton in Pasadena, which recently was closed because it didn’t meet earthquake safety standards.

But two years ago, even before the Pasadena hotel was deemed unsuitable, the Big Ten made a push to relocate. Last year, Ohio State became the first team to move to Industry Hills. Iowa will be checking in soon and will basically be leaving a wake-up call for 10 a.m. on Jan. 1.

While Fry’s mother-henning may seem a trifle severe and perhaps even silly, he’s certainly not the first Big Ten coach to have tried the tactic.

Former Ohio State Coach Woody Hayes, who was involved in eight Rose Bowls, was constantly trying to keep his team from the evil distractions in Los Angeles.

The night before the 1958 Rose Bowl, Hayes checked his team out of the Huntington-Sheraton and moved them to a monastery in the hills above Sierra Madre.

The next day, Ohio State defeated Oregon, 10-7.

It seemed like a good idea so, naturally, other coaches picked up on the idea.

In the 1961 Rose Bowl, Washington defeated Minnesota, 17-7.

Minnesota made it back in 1962 and Coach Murray Warmath vowed that there would be no more of that fun stuff this time around. Warmath, tired of the gridlock of humanity that was the Huntington-Sheraton around Rose Bowl time, two nights before the game moved his team into the same monastery.

It’s an event Warmath, now retired and living in Minneapolis, will never forget.

“When we pulled in, all the lights were out,” Warmath said of the monastery. “There were only the bus lights and the lights from the police escort. They were shining against statues and stuff. Bobby Bell (his star linebacker) turned to me and said, ‘Coach, you don’t have to worry about bed-check tonight.’ ”

Minnesota beat UCLA, 21-3. Warmath said going to the monastery was “the best thing we ever did.”

Bump Elliott took the monastery route when he coached Michigan in the 1965 Rose Bowl. Michigan beat Oregon State, 34-7.

Not everyone, though, thought it was such a great idea.

Former Chicago Bear safety Doug Plank, who played in three Rose Bowls for Hayes in the 1970s, said going back to the monastery before the 1973 Rose Bowl was a bad decision.

“That was at the height of Woody’s conservatism,” said Plank, who now operates a fast-food restaurant in Columbus, Ohio. “I remember we bused to the monastery. It was real dark and we were going up these winding roads. It was like the stairway to heaven, kind of like that insurance commercial, you know, ‘When it’s your time to go . . . ‘ It was kind of spooky . . .

“I’m not saying that’s the reason we lost to USC, they were better than us, but just to sit there in those rooms. There were no mirrors and one sink. And there was an apparatus for praying. I was 6-2, but the beds were only 6-feet long. I was wondering what our linemen were going through.

“Then, there were coyotes or wolves howling, I don’t know what. There was definitely something out there in the woods. The next day, we got our butts kicked.”

Plank said Hayes was much more relaxed when Ohio State returned to the Rose Bowl the following season. This time, Hayes was much more lenient and the Buckeyes beat the Trojans, 42-21.

“Of course,” Plank said, “ability has something to do with it. But, no question, now that I’ve had a chance to stand back and look at it, I’d say it’s at least a touchdown advantage.”

Rose Bowl distractions?

“Well,” Plank said of his first Rose Bowl visit as a sophomore in 1973, “there were several nights when I saw teen-age prostitutes trying to solicit players in the hallway. I had heard of prostitutes, but I had never seen them before. We got to see some dancers doing some explicit dancing. That’s something you didn’t see in Columbus, Ohio.”

But convincing anyone west of the Rocky Mountains that those little things have anything to do with recent Big Ten’s performances is another story.

Don Clark, former USC player and head coach, remembers things being a little bit different when Michigan came to town for the 1948 Rose Bowl game.

The Wolverines, so the story goes, arrived in California two weeks before the game and pretty much turned the place upside down. There wasn’t a Disneyland then, but Michigan players spent the holidays touring one movie studio after another. Some of the players spent off days playing golf, seeing the sites and going to the beach.

USC, meanwhile, moved into seclusion in Santa Barbara, where the team readied itself for the game by holding intra-squad scrimmages.

“We didn’t have many smiles on our faces the week before the game,” Clark said recently. “I’ll tell you, there were some long hours. It was intense. It wasn’t a reasonable excuse, but our team did not play well. And they were so relaxed. Forty-nine to zero was the answer.”

That was Michigan 49, USC 0.

So what’s the catch? Well, Big Ten people say that their conference was so superior in the early days that what they did before the game didn’t much matter.

“Frankly,” Clark said, “I believe it’s a disadvantage for the two local teams being in the Rose Bowl. They’re already here and don’t feel the natural excitement and high of going to the Rose Bowl. But, really, I can’t believe in any of those factors. When a player walks on the field he has to adjust to what happens on the field or he won’t be a champion.”

But still the Big Ten can look back on all the times it came into the Rose Bowl with the best team but walked away the loser.

In 1975, Ohio State walloped UCLA, 41-20, earlier in the season at the Coliseum. But in the 1976 Rose Bowl, Dick Vermeil’s Bruins returned the favor by the score of 23-10.

Perhaps the biggest upset came in the 1966 Rose Bowl, when UCLA defeated Michigan State, which had already been crowned national champion. The Spartans had defeated the Bruins earlier in the season.

But no matter the reasons for the Big Ten’s recent failures, there’s no question the conference is feeling the heat.

“It’s no secret,” Plank said, “that most of the Big Ten people are embarrassed by what’s gone on out there.”

Which brings us back to good ol’ Hayden Fry, who desperately is trying save a conference’s reputation by keeping his players in hiding.

But isn’t he taking all the fun out of the Rose Bowl?

“The Rose Bowl people are very intelligent,” Fry replied. “They are intelligent enough to realize our purpose and objective is for us to go out there and try to win, and then have some fun. We’re not going to take the fun away at all. In fact, you’ve never seen as much fun in your life if you’ve come into our dressing room after we’ve won.”