DISNEYLAND PIGSKIN GAME : It’s Just the First Step for Colorado, Tennessee

Colorado and Tennessee are about to embark on what they trust will be 13-game seasons, and their coaches want the teams to remember this: The bowl game is the one at the end.

The game they will play at Anaheim Stadium Aug. 26, the first Disneyland Pigskin game, only has the look of a bowl game, matching two teams that finished the 1989 season with 11-1 records and enter this season ranked among the nation’s best.

“We don’t want to treat this like a bowl game because it’s just the first game of a long season,” said Colorado Coach Bill McCartney, who guided the Buffaloes through an emotion-charged season last year during which quarterback Sal Aunese died of complications from stomach cancer in September.

Colorado, dedicating its season to Aunese and making a memorial of his locker, went undefeated last year until a 21-6 loss to Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl left them a step shy of a national championship.

Joe Garten, Colorado’s consensus All-American offensive lineman from Valencia High School and a contender for the Outland Trophy this season, said the team has been ready to reassert itself since that loss.

“You bet,” Garten said. “We wanted to start it right then.”

They are back for another run, this time behind a coach whose job is secure for the rest of his career. McCartney, who turns 50 this month, signed a 15-year contract in July.

Once again, Colorado will make its run behind Darian Hagan, the junior whom Tennessee Coach Johnny Majors calls the “most exciting quarterback I have seen run the option in my entire coaching career.”

Hagan ran for 1,004 yards last season and passed for 1,002 in the offense that has come to be known as the I-bone, and finished fifth in the Heisman Trophy voting.

Colorado will be without running back Eric Bieniemy, who is suspended for the game for disciplinary reasons.

Tennessee will begin this season against a team whose name is not much different from last year’s opening opponent, Colorado State.

The Volunteers struggled against a lesser opponent before winning, 17-14. They cannot afford to start slowly this year.

“This is a big game,” Tennessee quarterback Andy Kelly said. “Colorado is a big challenge this early in the season.”

Tennessee’s only loss last season was to Southeastern Conference rival Alabama, 47-30, and Majors focuses his attention on the SEC race.

“You’d swap this for a conference win,” he said. “I’d swap anything for a conference win.”

Majors breathed a sigh of relief this summer when he learned running back Chuck Webb had satisfied academic eligibility requirements.

“I think Chuck Webb has the talent to be as fine a running back as there is in the country,” Majors said.

Webb rushed for an average of 123.6 yards a game last season, despite not becoming a starter until the sixth game.

Game organizers said 25,000 to 30,000 tickets have been sold for the game.