For Once, Teams Want Freedom

Say what you will about a bowl game hopeful of selling Oregon-Colorado State to Orange County--sand to Saudi Arabia might be easier--but say this much for the members of the 1990 Freedom Bowl committee:

They’ve put a winning Ram team back in Anaheim Stadium.

Sounds like an ad campaign if Don Andersen ever heard one.

“Hey, we don’t even have to change the paint in one end zone,” notes Andersen, the Freedom Bowl’s rookie executive director. “Are we on a budget or what?”

The Colorado State Rams are coming, complete with former Mission Viejo High fullback Todd Yert (“The Battering Ram”), former Ohio State Coach Earle Bruce (“Head Ram I Am”) and a real live ram mascot (“Cam The Ram”).

Not to mention a real live Ram defense.

These Rams are a perfect match for Freedom VII, the bowl that only wants to be loved. Picture this scene, if you can: A packed stadium in Fort Collins two weeks ago, with Colorado State finishing off a victory over Tulsa to the soundtrack chant of “FREE-DOM BOWL! FREE-DOM BOWL!”

Andersen swears it happened.

“They had one side of the stadium chanting ‘FREEDOM’ and the other side chanting ‘BOWL,’ back and forth,” Andersen says. “They also tore down the goal posts afterward. That’s a real kick.”

And a real change from last year, when the Freedom Bowl had its eyes on Indiana and Anthony Thompson and the University of Florida had its eyes on New Year’s Day--only to reluctantly wind up with each other through a mean chain of events.

“Florida was a last-minute choice,” Andersen says. “Our people were waiting for Indiana, but Indiana lost on the last week to 2-8 Purdue (leaving the Hoosiers 5-6) and we had to turn to Florida.

“Now coming to Anaheim is no big deal to Florida. They have sunshine, golf courses, they even have Disney World. They were coming off two straight losses, their coach had been fired, their quarterback had been suspended for gambling and their athletic director, Bill Arnsbarger, didn’t even come to the game.

“That’s how excited they were about coming to the Freedom Bowl.”

Florida sold all of 1,200 tickets for the game, according to Andersen. Cal State Fullerton would have traveled better. The school didn’t send its pep band. “Oh, they were great,” Andersen says, so touched by the outpouring of Gator aid. (cq)

So the Freedom Bowl learned.

“This year,” Andersen says, “we set out to get two teams that were genuinely excited about the game. We didn’t want teams that looked at this as a consolation prize. We wanted teams that considered this an advancement in their programs.”

That answers the Colorado State and Oregon questions. Colorado State hasn’t been to a bowl game in 42 years, dating back to the Rams’ 21-20 loss to Occidental in the 1948 Raisin Bowl. Oregon played in the 1989 Independence Bowl but before that, the Ducks hadn’t made a bowl appearance in 27 years. This marks the first back-to-back bowl trips for Oregon.

For Colorado State and Oregon, Freedom rings as a step up. Both schools are excited. Andersen reports that Oregon already has sold 7,000 tickets for the Dec. 29 game and is aiming for 15,000. Colorado State has guaranteed 12,000.

Last December, Washington and Florida combined to sell just 7,000.

“So we’re already well ahead of last year,” Andersen says. “That was our philosophy going in. We needed to bring in teams that were going to bring some people to the game, just because of the financial state of our game.”

Translation: The Freedom Bowl will go belly-up if it keeps waiting for Orange County to rally around the game.

Unimpressed by past Freedom matchups not involving UCLA, the county was asked to consider a new proposition this August--the Disneyland Pigskin Classic. Excluding the worst name this side of the Poulan/Weed Eater Independence Bowl, the Pigskin game had many things going for it: the first date on the college schedule; potential national champion Colorado against eventually Sugar Bowl-bound Tennessee; scintillating action that resulted in a 31-31 tie.

The game drew 33,000.

“Everybody says this is a tough market to crack,” says Andersen, who also helped promote the Disneyland game, “but here we have Colorado, which is one game away from the national championship, and Tennessee, which came within an eyelash of beating Notre Dame and is in the Top 10--and we sell 4,300 tickets over the counter.

“I know people knew about the game. We took out $250,000 worth of ads in The Times. We had teams that were rated 1-2 in one poll. And we only sell 4,300 over the counter.”

Andersen keeps looking for an answer. Maybe BYU and Ty Detmer next summer will be it. “They’re one of the teams were considering for the Disney bowl and they have a built-in following here,” Andersen says.

Or maybe USC in the summer of ’92. “USC is likely going to play all its home games in Anaheim in ‘92,” Andersen says, “so the Disney bowl would be a natural.”

But all that matters now is December and Freedom VII. And until the Freedom Bowl can complete the never-ending search for a corporate title sponsor--Bigger Bucks For Bigger Names--Andersen will have to settle for the kindness of strangers living around Eugene and Fort Collins.

In a county that likes its cars, clothes and wine imported, imported college football fans would only have to figure.