The City of Anaheim and its visitors...

The City of Anaheim and its visitors and convention bureau pledged to bail out the debt-plagued Freedom Bowl with up to $250,000 in an interest-free loan after bowl officials warned that without the loan--in hand before the end of the week--the postseason football game would be canceled.

Six days before facing a June 30 deadline to pay the universities of Washington and Colorado a combined $527,000 for their participation in last year’s game, Freedom Bowl President Kevin Forth went before the Anaheim City Council and said: “We are not asking for a handout. We are not asking for a freebie. We are asking for a loan--pure and simple. . . . Without the loan we are requesting today, the Freedom Bowl cannot proceed.”

After almost two hours of discussion--including whether the loan to a private corporation was appropriate use of taxpayers’ money--the council unanimously agreed to the loan, due to be paid in full by 1994, with the first of three payments due in 1992.

Two of the five-member council sit either on the 1986 Freedom Bowl Board of Directors or the list of Advisers.

According to NCAA guidelines, the Freedom Bowl had to pay Colorado and Washington $500,000 apiece, the minimum for bowl awards in 1985. Original deadline for payments was April 1, but when the Freedom and Cherry bowls were unable to meet it, they petitioned for, and received, an extension until June 30.

Starr said the Freedom Bowl made initial payments to Colorado and Washington on March 30 of approximately $250,000 apiece. “We paid about half of it,” Starr said.

The remainder of the balance must be paid by Monday or, as Starr put it, “the door would be closed.”