Raisins, Blockbusters, It’s Bowling for Dollars

We have a conversation a while back with a gentleman serving as bowl liaison for the NCAA. It is our mission to find out how one can get a bowl game certified.

Possessed of this knowledge, we would approach guys walking down Broadway and ask if they would like to start a bowl game, using us as consultant.

It has been a lifetime aspiration here to work as a consultant. Consultants go to lunch a lot. Over filet of sole, they consult. Then they go home and wait for their check.

Certainly, this is a line of work that beats lifting.

Well, to get a bowl game certified, we were told you begin by posting a $1.5-million letter of credit. Then you guarantee (a) a stadium in workable order and (b) a television package.

Next, you must be vouched for by chief executive officers at 10 institutions that have performed in bowl games within the last five years.

And a final requirement is assurance on your part that each team playing in your bowl will be paid $500,000 or more.

Qualifying can’t be too hard, considering that 19 bowls have been certified this season, including the new Blockbuster Bowl.

OK, say you want to start a bowl game working outside the perimeter of the NCAA. Is that possible?

It is, you are told, if you invite Hofstra to play Alfred. Neither is Division I, over which the NCAA has jurisdiction. If you want Division I teams, you work through the trust.

You picture the NCAA in a former life selling protection.

Awaiting, with a tingle of excitement, the start of the 1990 bowl season, we contact a representative of San Jose State, matched against Central Michigan Saturday in the California Raisin Bowl.

The California Raisin Bowl is played in Fresno, which does a nice job turning out raisins. You eat a rice pudding, in fact, and the odds are 2-5 the raisins contained therein come from Fresno.

Since Fresno also turns out pistachios, the game just as easily could be called the California Pistachio Bowl.

The California Raisin Bowl is a unique offering, inasmuch as it is the only postseason game certified by the NCAA with permission to pay less to the competing teams than the minimum $500,000.

Each team at Fresno gets $275,000 and all the raisins it can eat.

“But we love Fresno,” our spokesman from San Jose State says. “Our only lament is, we played Louisville this year to a 10-10 tie and could have beaten ‘em in the last two seconds if we don’t blow a 24-yard field goal, and Louisville winds up in the Fiesta Bowl, which pays each team $2.1 million.”

In Louisville, you can’t earn that much going a mile and a quarter.

San Jose State lost to Washington by only 20-17, and Washington is going to the Rose Bowl for $7 million.

San Jose shrugs. So it plays for raisins; just as easily it could be playing for prunes.

And one can’t forget what Walter O’Malley told your correspondent who reminded him the Dodgers led baseball in attendance.

“You’re so materialistic,” said Walter. “The only thing that counts is friendship.”

Teams visiting the California Raisin Bowl are lavished with an exciting slate of entertainment. Arriving six days before the game, they open with a go-kart race, matching 11 drivers from the San Jose State team against 11 from Central Michigan.

This is followed by a bowling match. If Chris Schenkel would work for raisins, he would be asked to call it.

The teams then engage in a rib-eating contest at a Fresno restaurant, regrouping the next night for an ice cream-eating contest.

“Since this competition began,” we are informed, “the winner of the ice cream-eating contest each year also has won the football game.”

Overall, the cultural exposure at the California Raisin Bowl overshadows the slim payoff, no doubt explaining why the NCAA has certified a game failing to meet minimum cash standards.

This might inspire your bid for bowl certification. You will tell the NCAA:

“Our game is financially on the shorts, but represents a return to the Olympic ideal, an event offered in a clean, unadorned environment, free from commercial pressure.”

Good luck.