Fiesta Bowl Offers $100,000 Scholarships : Arizona: Officials hope to defuse the controversy following the state’s rejection of a holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr.

Fiesta Bowl officials, attempting to defuse the controversy surrounding the event following Arizona’s rejection of a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, today announced a substantial minority scholarship fund for each school competing in the event.

Officials also said there would be a halftime ceremony honoring King, the slain civil rights leader.

As expected, the bowl officials announced today that Louisville will play the Southeastern Conference runner-up in the New Year’s Day game that has been plagued by defections ever since voters failed to approve the King holiday last week.

The No. 20 Cardinals (9-1-1), making their first bowl appearance since 1977, will play either Tennessee, Mississippi, Auburn or Alabama. The SEC champion will play Virginia in the Sugar Bowl. The Cardinals’ opponent probably won’t be decided until Dec. 1, when Auburn plays Alabama.

The third- and fourth-place SEC teams will play in the Gator and Peach bowls.

Don Meyers, chairman of the Fiesta Bowl selection committee, said the bowl would provide an additional $100,000 for a minority scholarship fund or to endow a chair for minority students at each competing university. That money is in addition to the $100,000 the bowl already gives to each competing school to endow a university chair at each campus.

A pre-game ceremony will honor the 200th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, and a halftime ceremony will honor King, Meyers said.

Meyers said the Fiesta Bowl wasn’t pressured into these moves but rather was undertaking them as “a unique opportunity to be a very positive experience, an opportunity to stand up for civil rights.”

Meyers said the King controversy would not affect the Fiesta Bowl’s television contract with NBC, which signed a six-year extension in July.

“They have said they’ll back us 100% and are for keeping the game here because they think it is an Arizona game,” said Meyers, who is also the bowl’s legal counsel. “In fact, they said they’ll help acquire talent for us to put on a halftime spectacular to aid the civil-rights cause.”

Louisville Coach Howard Schnellenberger, speaking to a sports booster club in Birmingham, Ala., said he hoped sports could be cut off from politics.

“You have to understand that sports is something that is out of the realm of politics, and certainly if done in the right way, politics will not enter into this thing,” Schnellenberger said.

Money will, though. By changing games, the Cardinals will increase their payday from $600,000 to $2.5 million.