One Goal for Drug Funds: $800,000 Football Game

After months of bickering over the proper use of millions of dollars seized in drug raids each year, Orange County Supervisor Don R. Roth and Sheriff Brad Gates have finally found one expenditure they both want to study: football.

With the county facing a $41.5-million budget shortfall and in desperate need of billions of dollars in new courts and jails, the two leaders met last week with promoters of the Anaheim-based Freedom Bowl and agreed to consider adopting the holiday gridiron game at a cost of $800,000 a year.

The Dec. 29 college match-up--for six years without a corporate sponsor--would then be dubbed “The Orange County Freedom From Drugs Bowl” and trumpet the county’s anti-drug message to a nationally syndicated television audience.

On Thursday, Roth expressed enthusiasm, while Gates was skeptical. But local drug treatment officials didn’t like the idea at all.

“Would it suffice to say our county funding for this year was just a little more than what they’re talking about spending for this football game?” said William H. Smith, director of clinical services for the Phoenix House, a Santa Ana residential drug rehabilitation program that serves 85 adults and 50 adolescents.

“I’m not saying that taking kids to a football game can’t be a good thing,” Smith continued. “I just wonder what the bottom-line goal is. Are we taking about public relations to make it appear as if we’re doing a lot or are we talking about really helping the people who are fighting the fight?”

Roth said he believes the Freedom Bowl could provide the county’s war on drugs with an invaluable vehicle for reaching youth in the county and around the country. Roth also notes that, in any case, federal guidelines prohibit the county from using drug-forfeiture funds to balance the budget. And the entire drug fund, which is expected to total $17.1 million this year, would cover only a small part of the county’s jail needs, which will require additional sources of revenue.

“We don’t have a billion to spend for a jail either,” Roth said, noting that with a holiday bowl game “we would have national attention with the re-emphasis over and over and over again on the freedom from drugs . . . . I think myself that a good percent (of the drug-forfeiture fund) should be used for an education program telling our young people about the dangers of drugs.”

Roth said Gates agreed after their meeting with bowl officials last week to request an opinion from the county counsel on whether federal guidelines would permit the county to use drug funds to sponsor the bowl. Roth conceded, however, that Gates “probably didn’t have the same amount of enthusiasm as I did.”

Gates said he believed that a football bowl with an anti-drug message would give the county “a tremendous ability to have an impact during the game, before the game and after the game.” But the sheriff added that although he had agreed to consider the proposal, he did not believe county attorneys would advise that such an expenditure would be a legal use of the drug-forfeiture funds.

“I said I would be happy to go back and ask that question,” but “that I didn’t know whether that was a good idea to spend the money on a football game rather than on drug enforcement or education,” the sheriff said.

“Certainly, $800,000 is more than the Sheriff’s Department has to spend” on anything, Gates added.

Still, Freedom Bowl promoter Don Andersen, who met with Roth and Gates, said he was encouraged by the meeting. Andersen, a veteran sports publicist and former promoter of the World Football League, became executive director of the fledgling Orange County Sports Assn. this spring.

Formed in January, the association replaced the former Freedom Bowl organizers and recently persuaded the Walt Disney Co. to sponsor a preseason game at Anaheim Stadium, which will be known as the Disneyland Pigskin Classic.

Andersen said county sponsorship of the Freedom Bowl would provide long-sought funds, enabling the organization to attract better teams and ultimately more fans. Only one of the previous six bowl games--the UCLA-Brigham Young contest in 1986--drew enough of a crowd to be considered a financial success, Andersen said.

There are about 18 holiday football games across the county, and about half rely on corporate sponsors, Andersen said.

“We need to move up a notch in the monies that we have available to pay these teams,” Andersen said. “The Freedom Bowl has kind of been on a secondary level as far as pay-outs to teams go, so it’s in need of a sponsor.”

Tom Starr, who promoted the Freedom Bowl for six years before handing it off to Andersen, said bringing in the county as a sponsor is “an excellent idea” and would represent a coup for Andersen.

“It was very tough,” Starr said during a telephone interview from El Paso, Tex. “We tried for years” to find a sponsor. “I can’t think of a single major national company that we didn’t contact.”