USC Is Doing Its Part for the City of El Paso

Before the Sun Bowl became the John Hancock Sun Bowl, next to be known as the John Hancock Bowl, we asked the committee chairman what the game, played since 1936 at El Paso, did for society.

He answered: “It doesn’t do a damn thing for society. But it does a lot for El Paso.”

That’s logical enough. It will follow, in the course of events, that the name of the game’s location will be changed to John Hancock, Tex.

It will take its place alongside Mobil, Tex.; Federal Express, Fla., USF&G;, La., and Sunkist, Ariz.

And, of course, in Tucson, where the game is billed as the Domino’s Pizza Copper Bowl, you picture the sign by the side of the road:

“You are entering Domino’s Pizza, Ariz. If we don’t deliver in 30 minutes, the town is free.”

It isn’t clear how USC came to cast in this year with the John Hancock Bowl, except that when it became known that the Trojans would not be invited to the Rose Bowl, they needed a quick date.

Then they win two in a row--and say they have a good night at the Coliseum against Notre Dame. Suddenly, they have rebounded as a national giant, showing a record of 9-2-1, and off they go to El Paso to meet a second-rate troupe this year, Michigan State.

Academic geniuses in charge of college football have turned postseason play into an earthly farce. Bowl promoters are making the sport and those who administer it look idiotic. Manipulation has been unethical, if not rank, leading to matchups that shouldn’t have been made and to public laughter.

Mind you, overseers of the game represent our highest stratum of education, teachers of our young. If the lives of those they influence get as fouled as postseason football, you may be looking at a generation of nitwits.

For maybe 20 years now people with a modicum of common sense have pleaded with academicians for a national playoff, only to be rejected for a range of reasons that few believed.

College leaders have talked pompously of overemphasis, encroachment on studies, physical hardship on the entertainers.

But the more they argued, the more absurd they came to look in the context of the commercial direction the game would take and in view of the postseason liberties they would permit basketball and other sports.

Conditions today are so addled that USC, for instance, is not permitted, as a member of the Pacific 10 Conference, to accept an invitation from a bowl running in competition New Year’s Day with the Rose Bowl.

Because eight bowl games are booked that day, the field for USC narrows noticeably, maybe explaining its leaping at the El Paso bid as early as it did.

Not bound by such restrictions, Notre Dame committed itself to the Orange Bowl about the time USC said yes to John Hancock.

If this was a wise move on the part of Notre Dame, it wasn’t on the part of the Orange Bowl, considering the dive in the ratings of Notre Dame, which also has an even chance to lose to USC tonight.

Operating independently in its little nest in Indiana, Notre Dame detaches itself from the madness of its colleagues, arranging its own television deals and its own postseason milkings as the whim dictates.

Appearing in the Rose Bowl in 1925, Notre Dame would vanish from the postseason scene until 1969, when the thought occurred that such activity would be helpful to recruiting and the money directed to minority scholarships.

Since then, Notre Dame has gone regularly to bowls, but only twice to those considered off-Broadway. In 1983, it yielded to an invitation from the Liberty Bowl, whose scene it favored with a record of 6-5.

And the next season, it answered the call of the islands, visiting the Aloha Bowl with a record of 7-4.

But, for the most part, like a leading man informing his agent he doesn’t drop down to television, Notre Dame chooses to stay home those years it isn’t invited to a bowl rated as big time.

So let us picture now a scenario in which USC knocks off Notre Dame and goes to the John Hancock Bowl, rewarding each team with $880,000, while Notre Dame goes to the Orange Bowl, rewarding each team with $4.2 million.

What does Notre Dame say to USC? It gives the Trojans an encouraging pat, telling them their presence in El Paso might not do much for society, but does a lot for El Paso.