The Bloom Is Off the Rose Parade : New Year’s: Organizers and promoters have several theories to explain lower enthusiasm for this year’s procession and football game.

With only four days to go before Pasadena’s 101st Tournament of Roses Parade, officials say thousands of parade tickets remain unsold and that tickets to the Rose Bowl game have not gone as quickly as in previous years.

Held back by earthquake jitters, bored over a second USC-Michigan match-up and sated by last year’s 100th anniversary blow-out, many fans have been slow this year to flock to Southern California’s premier New Year’s Day procession and football game.

A few thousand unsold seats line the 5 1/2-mile parade route, said Sindee Anderson, general manager of Sharp Seating Co., which puts up 100,000 grandstand seats.

In a normal year, only a handful would remain by this point, Anderson said.

The head of a tour company that takes senior citizens to the parade and the Rose Bowl game estimated that the number of his visitors is down by half this year. “One group from Florida that usually brings 250 interested only 35 this year,” said Bud Johnsen of Special Events Services. “Instead of three bus loads from Amarillo, Tex., I’ve got a bus and a half.”

Even Pasadena Mayor William Thomson found an unresponsive market for the 100 Rose Bowl tickets that he distributed at face value, $42 apiece, for the USC-Michigan match up. “Up until (University of Michigan Coach) Bo Schembechler announced his retirement, there was not much of a demand for tickets,” he said.

With hundreds of thousands of people expected to line the parade route and more than 100,000 expected to jam themselves into the Rose Bowl, it’s not as if no one is coming to Pasadena’s party. But city and parade officials, as well as those who make their livings from the parade, are used to a higher level of enthusiasm.

They have different theories about why there isn’t more excitement this year.

“I think it’s the earthquake,” Anderson said. The 7.1-magnitude temblor in Northern California on Oct. 17 caused widespread damage and spawned tabloid predictions that California will fall into the ocean by Dec. 31.

East Coast customers have mentioned those accounts when they canceled tickets, Anderson said. “Most of us Californians are not worried about the shaking,” she said. “I know one tour operator who is telling them, ‘You have to love California with all its faults.’ ”

Johnsen believes that the parade’s 100th anniversary celebration in 1989 undercut enthusiasm for the 1990 parade. “The Tournament of Roses Assn. oversold the 100th anniversary,” he said. “If you were coming from out of state, you went last year. It’s easing down a little this year.”

But Jay Brooks of Al Brooks Rose Bowl Tours believes that domestic travel is down in general and the lagging Rose Parade business simply reflects an industrywide trend.

Finally, the idea that the same two college teams are playing for the second year in a row at the Rose Bowl has not helped. “People said, ‘Oh gee, Michigan and USC again, what’s new?’ ” Thomson said.

But after Schembechler, the 21-year Michigan coach and veteran of eight previous Rose Bowls, announced his retirement in mid-December, demand did heat up for game tickets.

Most people trying to buy game tickets will now have to pay between $75 and $250 to ticket agencies, which buy their tickets from the public and the colleges. The $42 face-value tickets have all been accounted for, according to Jack French, executive director of the Tournament of Roses Assn.

Under the tournament’s ticket distribution system with the National Collegiate Athletic Assn., the PAC 10 schools receive 52,000 tickets, the Big 10 gets 23,000 and the tournament association receives 25,000.

Of the tournament tickets, about 10,000 are allocated to the 1,400 tournament association members, whose entitlements are based on seniority. Another 7,000 tickets are purchased by float sponsors, 3,500 are set aside for a lottery for the general public, 1,200 are sold to the city of Pasadena and the rest are used for promotion.

City employees receive about 400 of the city tickets. The employees are selected to buy $42 tickets by department heads in drawings or by other methods devised by supervisors.

“We use them basically to do P.R. for the city and promote the name of the city,” said Ed Aghjayan, assistant city manager of Pasadena. For example, tickets are sold at face value to members of Congress, mayors and school officials throughout the country.

Members of the Board of Directors, the city’s seven-member council that includes the mayor, also receive 100 tickets each. The directors sell their $42 tickets to campaign supporters, family members, neighborhood organizations and residents within their districts.

The board’s ticket giveaway was criticized in 1987, when the Super Bowl was played at the Rose Bowl. After allegations of cronyism and favoritism were leveled against them, directors passed rules tightening ticket distribution. A list of people receiving tickets must be kept, and recipients must pledge not to resell them--a pledge board members say is nearly impossible to enforce.

Among those receiving tickets at face value this year is Billy Hinsdale, a 14-year-old newspaper carrier from Saratoga, Calif. Billy wrote the city’s mayor in November, saying he would save money from his newspaper route to buy tickets for his mother, father and sister Kathryn.

“I’ve been a good person for most of my life,” Billy wrote. “I get good grades and stay out of trouble.”