COLLEGE FOOTBALL : THE BOWL GAMES : Cefalo’s Background Makes Him Perfect for This Fiesta Bowl

Ready for one more bowl game? You’d better be.

NBC tonight offers the best money can buy, No. 1 Miami vs. No. 2 Penn State in what is now called the Sunkist Fiesta Bowl. Pregame coverage begins at 5 p.m. PST, with the kickoff set for shortly after 5:15.

This Arizona exercise used to be called just the Fiesta Bowl, but the name has been expanded since the sponsor, Sunkist Growers, came up with a lot of juice.

In addition to each school getting $2.4 million for its participation, NBC was guaranteed about $500,000 of commercial time from Sunkist just for calling the game by its new name.

The announcing team will be Charlie Jones, Jimmy Cefalo and Bob Griese. Griese was added after the game grew in stature and was moved from Jan. 1 to Jan. 2.

Cefalo and Griese are both former Miami Dolphins, and Griese still lives in the Miami area. But balancing things out is the fact that Cefalo played for Penn State in the mid-1970s. In fact, he played in the 1977 Fiesta Bowl, catching three passes in the Nittany Lions’ 42-30 victory over Arizona State.

“This game has my name written all over it,” Cefalo said from Phoenix this week. “Because we only do NFL games, I don’t follow college ball as closely as I’d like to, but these two teams, Penn State and Miami, are the two I follow the closest.”

From 1982 through most of 1985, when Cefalo was living in Miami, he worked for a television station there, WTVJ. He was the co-host of two shows, “AM South Florida” and “PM Magazine,” and also did some sports reporting. “One of my jobs was covering (Miami Coach) Jimmy Johnson’s weekly press conferences,” he said.

Coincidentally, Cefalo in 1985 also was the host of “The Joe Paterno Show,” which is syndicated throughout the East. He commuted from Miami to State College, Pa., no easy feat, for part of the season, and then commuted from New York after moving there in November.

That’s when Cefalo went to work for NBC. He was hired by both the sports and news divisions. He was hired as a football commentator by sports and as a member of the “News at Sunrise” staff by news. He does the sports segment for “News at Sunrise, which is shown live at 6 a.m. by some stations and delayed until 6:30 a.m. by others.

That job requires that he report to work at 3 a.m. “I usually try to take a nap in the middle of the day,” he said.

Cefalo played for the Dolphins from 1978 through 1984 as a wide receiver and punt returner. He was a third-round draft choice. His best season was 1981, when he caught 29 passes. He played in Super Bowls XVII and XIX.

But Cefalo might be best known for calling off his marriage plans on his wedding day in 1984. It made national news.

“One thing that really bothered me was a lot of people thought I called off the wedding because I’m some sort of Cassanova,” he said. “Actually, the opposite is true.

“The socially acceptable thing to do would have been to go through with the marriage and later get a divorce. But because of my religion (he is Catholic), that would not have been acceptable to me.”

Cefalo, looking back, said he made the right decision. But it wasn’t easy. “It was the most trying experience of my life,” he said.

He said he and his ex-fiancee, Susan Baker, have remained friends.

Cefalo, 30 and still a bachelor, said he hopes to marry and have a family--some day. “It’s definitely in my future plans, but right now I’m so involved in my career, working seven days a week, it would be difficult.”

Cefalo grew up in the old coal-mining community of Pittston, Pa., where his football abilities made him something of a local hero. He was recruited by most of the nation’s football powers.

At the time, the New York Times was putting together a series on recruiting. They wanted first-person stories from an athletic director, a coach and a high school athlete. The first athlete the newspaper picked was Moses Malone, but he failed to produce a usable story. The next athlete chosen was Cefalo, and his story was printed.

So Cefalo had a byline in the New York Times before he got out of high school. That fit in nicely with his future plans. His ambition at the time was to become a newspaper reporter, preferably specializing in labor issues. That’s an area in which his family has been closely involved. They are in the garment business. Also, his father is a winemaker.

Cefalo, by the way, is an Italian name. “It’s actually supposed to be pronounced Chefalo , but nobody pronounces it that way,” he said.

Cefalo was a journalism major at Penn State and became interested in broadcasting after getting a summer job at a radio station in Pittston.

As Cefalo’s broadcasting career blossommed in Miami, NBC’s boxing commentator, Ferdie Pacheco, who lives in Miami, was among those who took note. And he told his bosses about Cefalo.

NBC first hired Cefalo in 1984 to do a “SportsWorld” segment on the Zendejas family of kickers. But he didn’t join the network full time until the job with the news department came through.

Now, a little over a year later, he is working college football’s top game.

“I’ve been waiting 27 years to work a game of this magnitude,” Charlie Jones said, “and Jimmy does it in one.”

TV-Radio Notes If tonight’s game is to get the highest rating ever for a college football game, it will have to draw better than a 29.2. The record was set by the 1978 Rose Bowl between Washington and Michigan. Second-highest rating was a 28.6 for the 1980 Rose Bowl between USC and Ohio State. . . . Contrary to popular belief, tonight’s game is not a financial bonanza for NBC. “The financial aspects of this game are not what we went into it for,” Ken Schanzer, executive vice president of NBC Sports, told the Associated Press. “We went into it because we were offered the chance to have a very special game and we’re delighted. But it is not financially rewarding. We’re in a situation where we will be preempting profitable prime-time programming for something that won’t bring in the same kind of revenues. . . . Bob Costas is scheduled to interview President Reagan during halftime tonight. . . . Jimmy Cefalo and Bob Griese, as former Dolphins, should be familiar with the Miami Hurricanes’ offense because it’s the same one the Dolphins use. Earl Morrall, former Dolphin quarterback, installed it when he was brought in as an unpaid volunteer by former Coach Howard Schnellenberger to work with the quarterbacks. Morrall, during a two-year stint, worked with Jim Kelly one year and with Bernie Kosar and Vinny Testaverde the next.

A reminder: Fred Roggin’s year-end “Hall of Shame” will be repeated on Channel 4 tonight following the Fiesta Bowl. . . . Add blooper shows: They’re starting to get a little hackneyed. Everyone seems to be doing them. Another one, “Lite Moment in Sports,” produced by Major League Baseball Productions, will be televised on Channel 4 Sunday at 11 a.m. With Joe Namath as host, the show has its moments, but it’s still your basic blooper show. . . . NBC, on its “NFL ‘86,” has been poking fun at CBS’ Jimmy the Greek because he hasn’t been faring well in his predictions. Last Sunday, NBC had a life-sized poster of the Greek looking over prognosticator Paul Maguire’s shoulder. CBS spokesman Doug Richardson said: “It’s just another in a series of low-rent moves by a bunch of people whose paranoia is out of control.” . . . The Rams’ Eric Dickerson will be featured on “Sports Lifestyles” on Channel 7 Saturday at 4 p.m. . . . “The Winner’s Circle,” a weekly thoroughbred racing show, will make its debut on ESPN next Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. . . . Attention, motorcycle racing fans: “MotoWorld” has been moved from the USA network to the Nashville network, where it will be televised Sundays at 8 a.m. and repeated at 2 p.m. and 11 p.m.