Deal Would Strengthen WAC-Holiday Bowl Partnership

The Western Athletic Conference football champion will continue to be the host team for at least the next five Holiday Bowls, and the game will get a financial boost if a new agreement between the conference and the bowl is completed.

John Reid, Holiday Bowl executive director, said Friday the deal would begin with the WAC champion again playing host to the game in San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium this year, negating an agreement that allowed the bowl to have two non-WAC participants in 1988. The conference would then guarantee that a total of $100,000 would be added to team payoffs in each of three consecutive years, starting with the game just played between Iowa and Wyoming.

The WAC-backed contribution would help the bowl meet its goal of a minimum $750,000 payoff per team, Reid said. He said the conference would either contribute the $100,000 per year itself, or a sponsor would be found to do so.

The deal, reached by a committee of WAC athletic officials and bowl representatives, must be approved by a majority of the conference’s nine university presidents. Reid said he hoped that decision would come by the end of January.

The original tie-in between the WAC and Holiday Bowl was to run from 1978 through 1990. The deal was renegotiated before the 1985 game, with the bowl committee free to select any two participants in 1985 and 1988. The WAC was again to supply host teams in 1989 and 1990, and the bowl agreed to invite a WAC representative twice more over the following six years.

The new agreement would recommend that three-year extensions be negotiated whenever two years remain on the contract. That would begin after the 1990 game, when an extension to 1995 would be discussed.

Reid said a three-year broadcast deal with ESPN, which began with the 1987 game, and increasing football balance within the conference had made a regular tie-in attractive again.

“At the time we renegotiated for open years in 1985 and 1988, the most compelling reason was that the networks told us the WAC was not an attractive television entity because of lack of population,” Reid said. “We also thought there was a little lack of variety. BYU had been to seven straight games. We felt like we were in a little bit of a rut.

“The reason we changed our mind is that we got the interest from ESPN, which likes the WAC, and the WAC began to have a little more balance, to wit San Diego State last year and Wyoming this year.”

The Holiday Bowl guaranteed $750,000 to Iowa and Wyoming for participating in the 1987 game. Sea World, the bowl’s major sponsor, contributed enough to pay each school about $700,000, Reid said. If the agreement with the WAC is not completed, he said, the remainder of the guarantee will be paid from the bowl’s reserves. Payoffs are to be made March 1.

Reid said $750,000 is “a number in our opinion that was the jumping-off point that would make us competitive for quality teams. It helped us get the ESPN contract.”

The 1986 participants, San Diego State and Iowa, received $661,000 each.

Joe Kearney, WAC commissioner, said he was confident a sponsor could be found to relieve the conference of its financial obligation.

“We’d like to think that by this spring, we’d have a sponsorship in place,” he said.

Kearney said he wasn’t aware of any similar conference-bowl arrangements.

“It’s an unusual and creative approach by bowl and conference working together,” he said. “We’ve had a good relationship, and this is the way to cement it.”