Fiesta Bowl: Is It Dollars or Sense, or Both? : POINT : This Isn’t University Version of the Oldest Profession, OK?

Call it Son of Super Bowl.

Or call it the Best Little Whorehouse in Arizona.

The official title is the Sunkist Fiesta Bowl, and it is creating a major stir in the sports world. It is a college football game, Penn State vs. Miami, to be held in Tempe, Ariz., the night after New Year’s Day.

The game will determine the national championship. Which you have to love, unless you’re one of those people who enjoys reading a mystery novel and discovering that someone ripped out the last page.

So what’s the problem? What’s the controversy?

The name, for starters. Some purists object to the new concept of corporate sponsors attaching their names to the events they sponsor. This is a silly complaint, dismissed with a wave of the hand.

I’m just pleased that the sponsorship didn’t go to, say, Preparation H. To throw out the ceremonial first ball, the sponsors would have trotted out the star of their TV commercials, that friendly druggist and hemorrhoid consultant. And the football would have been foil-wrapped.

Next complaint, please.

Prostitution.

Prostitution?

That’s correct. Miami, Penn State and the Sunkist Fiesta Bowl people have been charged with prostitution.

What happened is that the two schools are independents, with no bowl ties. They are both free agents. They are also ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the country. The Fiesta Bowl, with the backing of NBC, offered Miami and Penn State big money to play a game in Tempe, and to switch from the traditional big-bowl day of Jan. 1 to Jan. 2, on prime-time TV.

The two schools, who unlike most of us thirst for money and prestige, accepted the perfectly legal offer.

“Nothing good is coming out of the prostitution of the ‘dream bowl’ ,” one critic railed. “What’s happening is that Penn State is for sale. So is Miami.”

Guess who said that? Why, it was a prominent member of the Cotton Bowl selection committee. The Cotton Bowl is one of the solidly entrenched old-timer bowls. The Sunkist Fiesta Bowl is not one of those bowls.

Representatives of two other old-timer bowls, the Rose and the Sugar, also checked in with official cries of “prostitution.” That seems to be the word of the day.

I have a mental image of the players showing up in Tempe the evening of Jan. 2 wearing heavy rouge and fish-net stockings, leaning seductively against the goal posts.

I looked up prostitution in the dictionary. It means “to sell for low or unworthy purposes.”

If using the lure of money and glory to attract the two top teams to Tempe to play for the national championship of collegiate football is a low or unworthy purpose, I’d hate to be the Rose Bowl or Sugar Bowl or Cotton Bowl on judgment day.

Some purists are also weeping and wailing about the game being moved from Thursday to Friday. New Year’s Day, for them, is the holy day of gridiron warfare.

These critics, despite the big media play they’re getting, are a teardrop in the ocean.

I have to admit, I’m not too thrilled about the game being moved to Friday night and bumping “Miami Vice,” but that’s only because I always base my week’s wardrobe selection on what Sonny Crockett wears Friday night.

That one problem aside, the move to Friday night is brilliant. If extending the college football season one night is prostitution, what label can we find for items like freshman eligibility, spring practice and starting the season earlier and earlier?

The critics whine on about how TV is calling the shots. Point conceded. And the earth circles the sun.

But TV can sometimes do the right thing, if only by accident. Sure, the TV people screwed up the World Series, giving us twilight fright games, and TV has wielded a heavy and greedy hand in many other sporting events. But in this case, TV did us a favor.

The fans love this game. The players love it. Who else matters?

The old bowls hate it, because the Sunkist Fiesta Bowl is the beginning of the end of the cozy, incestuous bowl system, a system propped up by money. TV money.

The Sunkist Fiesta Bowl is the beginning of the beginning of a true college playoff system, which is what most of us want, but which is opposed by--altogether now: The old bowls.

With an organized playoff system, we would have a Son of Super Bowl every year, without having to rely on blind luck, a quirk of timing or the quick thinking of TV and bowl people.

True playoffs are a few years off. For now, all we can do is be grateful for what we’ve got, which would seem to be the prospect of one dandy football game.

And the critics want to take that away. Please pass the Preparation H.