Rejecting King Day Could Be Harmful to All Arizona Sports

It will happen Wednesday, in the neighborly village of Dallas, that the cerebral trust of the National Football League will discuss a matter of vital concern.

The owners will decide whether to keep the 1993 Super Bowl game in Phoenix, where the event was consigned before it was known that folks in Arizona would refuse to recognize Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday as a national holiday.

Rejecting this idea at the polls last week, Arizona faces loss of the Super Bowl treasure.

But those concerned with sports there shudder at the possibility of what could follow. First, there is understandable worry over what is going to happen to the Sunkist Fiesta Bowl, a postseason football promotion, televised New Year’s Day by NBC.

What schools eligible for invitations will reject them if the game continues to be booked in Arizona?

Can Sunkist, which sells orange juice to everyone, afford to be linked with such an inflammable issue?

Can NBC afford to be linked with it?

Then over in Tucson, a postseason extravaganza is booked called the Copper Bowl, reported this year to be offering feelers to the University of California at Berkeley.

Can you picture a team from Berkeley getting involved in a mess such as this? A seat of enlightenment, the school will be hurled by its students off the bridge if its team chooses to recognize a state that turns its back on the King holiday. There have been times at Berkeley when the library has been burned for less.

We turn our attention next to pro basketball, which fields a team in Phoenix called the Suns. Considering the preponderance of blacks in the NBA, can you picture the league ever awarding the All-Star Game to Phoenix?

Can you picture the league awarding anything to Phoenix?

Then you have eight major-league baseball teams engaging in spring training in Arizona. In view of the heat that is starting to generate, are they going to be eager to hang around that state?

And, if they do, what is going to be the attitude of the players?

Steadily, over the years, the University of Arizona and Arizona State have put together excellent teams in football, basketball, baseball and track.

They were competitive enough, in fact, for the two Arizona schools to be admitted to what is now the Pacific-10 Conference.

Since the population of Arizona runs only 3.5 million, it behooves those in charge of procuring to work territories outside that state.

A large number of recruits is black. What are bird dogs from Arizona and Arizona State going to do to persuade blacks to come to a place turning its back on Martin Luther King Jr.?

At Arizona State, the athletic director is black. Some on his staff are black. How uncomfortable for them to try to explain to prospects the recent turn of events.

In basketball, Arizona the last three years shows the best record in the NCAA. Its winning percentage has run .864. Its teams have advanced to the NCAA Tournament the last six years in a row.

This hasn’t happened with all-white performers. Actually, of the 12 principals composing the Arizona roster this year, eight are black. Seven have been recruited from out of state.

The coach of Arizona is Lute Olson, who gave up a job in Iowa for this one. Poor Mr. Olson. You won’t find him smiling today like Mrs. Olson, who used to sell mountain-grown coffee on television.

With word escaping that Phoenix is hard-pressed to keep the Super Bowl it captured, opportunists are understandably at work.

At the NFL meeting in Dallas, they will appear with a fund of compelling reasons why the game should be shifted to Los Angeles, San Diego, or San Francisco.

To protect its position, Phoenix may take hostages, described as guests. It then will plead for a peaceful solution, offering to release the guests in exchange for keeping the game.

Tests are being made now in another part of the world to determine whether such strategy works.