Starr Resigns as Director of Freedom Bowl

Citing frustration and fatigue after six years of trying to build the Freedom Bowl into a major event, Tom Starr resigned Wednesday as the game’s executive director.

“I feel like the world’s been lifted off my shoulders,” said Starr, the Freedom Bowl’s executive director since its inception in 1984. “I don’t know if you want to call it burnout or what, but this is something I’ve been thinking about doing for a long time.

“I think it’s time. It’s a good time for them, it’s a good time for me. I need to step back for a while, stop to smell the roses.”

Starr, 41, admitted that he was disappointed over the game’s inability to attract a title corporate sponsor and its failure to generate more interest among Orange County sports fans. The 1989 Freedom Bowl, which featured the universities of Washington and Florida, drew 33,858 to Anaheim Stadium to watch Washington defeat Florida, 34-7.

“We need to get the stadium sold out and we need to get a title sponsor,” Starr said. “That was my biggest disappointment--failing to get the title sponsor. That would have given us the money we needed to attract maybe a higher caliber of teams.”

At $500,000 a team, the Freedom Bowl had the lowest guaranteed payoff of any postseason bowl game.

Starr said the added responsibility of staging the recently approved Disneyland Pigskin game contributed to his decision to resign. The inaugural preseason game is tentatively scheduled Aug. 26, with Colorado, Florida State, Notre Dame and Miami among the schools being considered.

“Trying to put together the preseason game, in addition to our regular game, just took the starch out of me,” Starr said. “It seemed like I was traveling year-round.”

Previously, Starr spent five years as executive director of the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Tex., and four years as assistant to the commissioner in the Big Eight Conference.

In addition to Starr’s resignation, the Freedom Bowl board of directors announced that it had voted to change the name of the organization to the Orange County Sports Assn.