Bowl Representatives Show Their Colors : They’re Out in Force With Coats of Arms to Lure Teams to Postseason Games

It is nearly November, which can mean only that the Bowl season is in full swing. Think of it as a kind of hunting season.

On a warm Saturday at Arizona Stadium with the rugged Catalina Mountains glowering in the distance, the bowl hunters assembled. They had the football teams from UCLA and Arizona in their sights.

What these bowl representatives saw was a 24-3 Bruin victory over the Wildcats. What the Bruins and the Wildcats saw was a group of men in brightly colored sports coats.

To many, they may have looked alike, but upon closer inspection, they could be easily identified by the hue of their jackets.

So this is how to tell them apart--color-coding.

John Scovell, vice chairman of the Cotton Bowl selection committee, knows how they appear when they’re all together.

“I’d say we look like a bunch of shoe salesman, but I don’t want to make any shoe salesmen mad,” he said. “Yellow coats, green coats, blue coats.”

Green is for the Cotton Bowl and the Florida Citrus Bowl. Blue is for the Freedom Bowl. Yellow is for the Fiesta Bowl. And when the Holiday Bowl asked for credentials to the game, it meant the red coats were coming, too.

“It’s kind of our uniform,” said red-jacketed Bob Hood of the Holiday Bowl.

It is the only red sports coat Hood owns, but he admitted it is handy around Christmas time.

Kirk Hendrix of the Freedom Bowl said his blue blazer carries an important message.

“We’re subtle,” he said. “No yellow, no green, no red.”

To a man, the traveling bowl boys were plenty busy. They came, they saw, they played a little golf, they hung their jackets neatly in the press box and then, like Scovell, they checked the airline schedule back home.

“Ever try to get from Tucson to Dallas?” he asked. “It’s a killer.”

The Cotton Bowl has been an ardent suitor of the Pacific 10 Conference, which has never sent a team to Dallas. Cotton Bowl representatives have seen UCLA and USC play 3 times.

Should the UCLA-USC game decide the Pac-10 title, then the team that doesn’t get to the Rose Bowl would be quite welcome to play in the Cotton Bowl and meet the Southwest Conference champion, Scovell said.

“We don’t want the loser, we want the runner-up,” Scovell said. “Obviously, USC and UCLA are very much in our picture.”

Obviously, no kidding.

Some of the bowls have better shots at getting UCLA or USC, or Arizona, than others. Even George Taylor (Fiesta Bowl, yellow jacket) seemed plenty busy although he may not have a reason.

The Pac-10 has a policy preventing a member school from playing in a bowl that competes in the same New Year’s Day time slot with the Rose Bowl.

However, Taylor was undaunted. “We’re going to keep coming until they tell us to go away, and they haven’t told us to go away.”

Fiesta Bowl representatives met with Pac-10 officials last week and asked them to reconsider. Tom Hansen, Pac-10 commissioner, said the Fiesta Bowl proposal was put before Stanford President Don Kennedy, head of the conference presidents, and Stanford Athletic Director Andy Geiger, chairman of the athletic directors’ group.

“We told them (Fiesta Bowl representatives) that there would have to be an internal discussion,” Hansen said. “I don’t think there will be a favorable decision, but we’ll have a pretty good idea if there will be a change of mind by the middle of next week.”

Taylor said he told Kennedy and Geiger that the Fiesta Bowl, which is on NBC, will take 15 rating points and about $5 million in advertising revenue from the Rose Bowl, which will be on ABC.

“It’s all ratings and teams,” Taylor said. “If it makes good business sense, maybe they’ll listen.”

UCLA Athletic Director Pete Dalis said the Bruins would not go to the Fiesta Bowl if they are invited because Chancellor Charles Young believes strongly in the conference’s bowl policy.

Even so, Dalis said he would continue to socialize with bowl representatives. “That doesn’t mean I won’t play golf or have dinner with them,” he said. “It’s all business. They know that, and I know that. We all do what’s best.”

What’s best for Arizona, which dropped to 4-3, may be the Freedom Bowl in Anaheim or the Holiday Bowl in San Diego.

“If we go 7-4, we’ve got to be looked at there,” said Cedric Dempsey, Arizona’s athletic director.

Dempsey also plays a little golf with the bowl boys when he has a chance, but Scovell said anyone who thinks that he leads a truly colorful life, full of neon blazers, 19th holes and gourmet meals, is getting the wrong impression.

“Hey, it’s tough out here,” he said. “We’re all competing. Even more so than before when there weren’t 185 bowls like there are now. Sometimes when I go out, I don’t know 50% of the (bowl) people out here. The number of bowls has grown so much. Come on. Really.

“I’m sure there are lots of schools who think bowl reps are a nuisance,” Scovell said. “We don’t travel until the middle of October.

“But things have escalated so much. I mean you go to the first game of the year, and 8 bowls are there. You know, I’m not sure if this is the right expenditure of finances--as if the first game has any bearing on the rest of the season.

“But it’s the first game, and in comes a bunch of bowl reps. What in the world are we doing?”

Hunting, perhaps?