Cal Remains Firm on Decision to Play in Copper Bowl

The University of California at Berkeley football team will accept an invitation to play at Arizona’s Copper Bowl despite pressure to snub the game, the school’s athletic director said today.

The NAACP and some student groups have urged the team not to play in the Dec. 31 bowl game because Arizona voters last week rejected a paid Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

Cal must decide Nov. 24 whether to accept the Copper Bowl invitation, but team members have already decided to go, voting unanimously on Sunday during two team meetings to play in the school’s first bowl game since 1979.

“Our plans haven’t changed,” Cal Athletic Director Dave Maggard said today. “Our players are as sensitive to this issue as anybody could be, but there’s a strong feeling that we should go.

“We could call attention to this issue and bring about change that way,” he added, saying that a majority of voters in the city of Tucson where the game will be played voted to approve a King holiday despite overall rejection by the state.

Opinion appeared divided on campus, with student government leaders criticizing the team and the student newspaper supporting the decision to play in the Copper Bowl.

“We feel if at all possible, we shouldn’t play in Arizona,” said David Werdlick, spokesman for the Associated Students of the University of California. “We feel it’s a poor reflection on the university.”

The Daily Californian published an editorial Monday supporting the players’ decision to participate in the bowl game. (Story, C1).

“Almost everybody (on the editorial board) expressed some reservations about Cal going to the game,” said Cedric Puleston, editor of the paper. “But the decision was left up to the players, and they voted unanimously to go. That’s what we respect, the way the decision was made.”

On Nov. 6, Arizona voters rejected a paid holiday celebrating King’s birthday, although it’s a federal holiday and Tucson officially honors it.

Merle Miller, executive director of the Copper Bowl committee, said he was not surprised about the negative reaction to rejecting the King holiday but that it was too late to change the game location.

The Arizona vote has caused the National Football League to consider pulling its planned 1993 Super Bowl game out of Tempe.