Holiday Bowl Mulls Possibilities of Title

With the early success of Brigham Young’s football team, the possibility of the Holiday Bowl hosting a national championship in San Diego Dec. 29 is being explored, according to bowl president Robert Payne.

The Holiday Bowl was announced as a sellout Tuesday, when Payne said participating teams can expect a projected record payoff of $1.2 million.

However, should BYU continue on its winning course, Payne said the guaranteed payoff could go up to produce a national championship here.

“It’s not too early to anticipate that that could be a possibility,” Payne said. “There’s no assurance that we could (host it), but we’ll do everything we can to address ourselves to that issue.”

Payne said the Holiday Bowl has already discussed the issue with ESPN.

“We’ll prepare ourselves, we won’t wait,” he said. “We’re proceeding with initial contacts in that area.”

Another area the Holiday Bowl might have to reconsider is the day of the game. Payne said they would be open to changing the date, but that any change would be subject to NCAA approval.

“From our point of view, we’d change it, if it was an NCAA championship,” he said. “But I don’t know if we need to. I’m not sure that this date that we’ve got, in prime time, on non-New Year’s Day, very well could be the best date possible. But that would be part of our analysis. We’d be open to the fact that if TV contracts said look, we want this from you . . . we wouldn’t say no, no way.”

There were 40,000 of 60,000 tickets available to sell locally, and NCAA rules provide that 20,000 tickets must be available for the two participating teams. The Western Athletic Conference has guaranteed to sell their 10,000 allotment, leaving 10,000 seats available for the at-large opponent.

Nine of the previous 12 Holiday Bowls have sold out, but none this early. BYU vs. Penn State sold out Oct. 2, 1989, the second earliest sell out.