Bowl Games Survive King Controversy, but Arizona Suffers

When last we left it, the Grand Canyon State was in a state of turmoil. The voters had rejected two propositions that would have established a paid state holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr., the slain civil rights leader.

Forty-seven states have such a holiday, and Arizona became a national symbol, albeit a reluctant one, when on Nov. 6 it became the first state to vote on and reject the paid holiday.

The gestation period for controversy, among the shortest for all calamities, broke records with this issue. Overnight, racism was again the subject of national debate, and Arizona was its focal point. According to a large segment of national opinion, the state was a social backwater and its residents were racists.

As reaction grew more serious--in the form of millions of dollars in lost convention business and the threat of losing the 1993 Super Bowl--Arizonans dug in. “Leave us alone; why pick on us; don’t mix sports and politics,” they said.

While the controversy might linger elsewhere, it seems to stop at the border. On the eve of Monday’s Copper Bowl in Tucson and the Fiesta Bowl in Tempe on New Year’s Day, two major sporting events thought to be heavily hit by King Day fallout, the mood is upbeat and relentlessly cheerful.

And while no one denies that the two bowls will experience financial shortfalls, that could as easily be attributed to the nation’s troubled economy as to the King Day mess. The poor ticket sales have likewise been assigned causes other than the controversy.

There is a stubborn and rather uniform refusal to acknowledge that the holiday issue has in any way harmed the state. This view dovetails nicely with the state’s I-told-you-so stance. There has been no hint of protest at either bowl site. The teams--California (6-4-1) and Wyoming (9-3) in the Copper Bowl and Louisville (9-1-1) and Alabama (7-4) in the Fiesta Bowl--have not been bothered.

Wilbert Nelson, president of the Phoenix chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, said his group has no plans to boycott, picket or protest the Fiesta Bowl and its events and is unaware of any groups planning to disrupt the Copper Bowl.

It has been so quiet that when something does percolate through the ooze of public disinterest, it is received with a mighty bang.

Take the case of the Letter to the NFL, which was front-page news in Phoenix last week. The president of the American Indian Bible College in Phoenix sent a letter to NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue asking the league to force the Washington Redskins to change their name.

“If you are sincere about your anti-racist concerns, why do you not recommend to the owner that the name be changed?” Moore wrote to Tagliabue.

This story was gleefully repeated around Arizona as a kind of taste-of-their-own-medicine shot at the NFL and its threat to pull the Super Bowl.

Not that the issue of a paid holiday for King is taken lightly or even dismissed altogether. Gov. Rose Mofford is still attempting to have Arizona’s legislature deal with the issue again. However, her efforts to rally support for a special session on the paid holiday issue failed when, two weeks ago, no lawmakers would agree to meet Mofford for lunch to discuss it.

The matter apparently will be dealt with when the Arizona Legislature convenes in its regular session next month. However, even then there is no assurance the King Day issue will be settled. The state must still organize and stage a run-off for governor, another matter that was not settled Nov. 6.

Mofford, who is not in the runoff, has made the King Day issue her personal crusade. She led a delegation of state officials that met with Tagliabue earlier this month.

Their intention was to persuade the commissioner to reconsider his decision to urge NFL owners to move the 1993 Super Bowl to another state. The meeting, while described as cordial, failed to sway Tagliabue.

State officials say the loss of the Super Bowl can be converted to a loss of $200 million in income to the state.

The Arizona landscape is littered with the economic fallout from the election. Tourism, the state’s No. 2 industry, has been hit with an estimated $30-million loss from conventions that have moved to other cities. Dozens of companies have changed plans to relocate to Arizona, citing the King Day controversy as one reason.

And the Fiesta Bowl, which last New Year’s Day brought in an estimated $30 million to the state, is not likely to set any profit records. The bowl is $691,000 in debt, and ticket sales have been sluggish.

The teams have bought about 5,000 tickets each and may not sell all of them, according to John Junker, the Fiesta Bowl’s executive director. The game will not be a sellout, and Junker said he is considering a local television blackout.

Junker said he can trace the slow sales to at least one event, the Nov. 6 election.

“November is our No. 1-selling ticket month, and that’s when all this King controversy came down,” he said. “Take this controversy to any other bowl and see how many tickets they sell.”

Copper Bowl sales have been worse. Merle Miller, executive director of the Tucson event, said the generally slow economic climate is a factor. The Copper Bowl expects about 35,000 in 56,000-seat Arizona Stadium.

Miller said each team was allotted 10,000 tickets; Cal has sold nearly 8,000, but Wyoming has sold only 3,000.

According to Wyoming ticket manager Louie Krutsch, the university has an agreement with the Western Athletic Conference to pay jointly for the 7,000 unused tickets. Priced at $27 each, that amounts to $189,000.

Melva Miller, Cal ticket manager, said the university expected to donate unbought tickets to needy persons in the Tucson area.

Some problems proved too sticky for even the perky, yellow-coated Fiesta Bowl officials to smooth over. Take, for example, the problem of finding two teams willing to play in Arizona.

While Fiesta Bowl officials are not willing to state categorically that the King Day controversy was responsible for teams such as Notre Dame, Virginia and Mississippi going elsewhere, it’s difficult to imagine what other factor would cause a university to turn down the Fiesta Bowl’s $2.5-million payout.

After Alabama accepted the Fiesta Bowl’s invitation, university officials had to scramble to quash criticism from within. Various ad hoc committees met and argued, and the upshot was that the school will set aside $100,000 from its bowl receipts to improve academic programs relating to minority issues. Alabama also agreed to reactivate an advisory committee for minority affairs “to promote full representation by African-Americans in the life of the university.”

The Copper Bowl, with its $600,000-a-team payout, had an even smaller spectrum of teams from which to select. On the politically aware Berkeley campus, the idea of going to Arizona for a football game was disgusting to some. The Golden Bear players met, however, and voted to accept the bid.

There was little or no controversy reported in Wyoming, whose players have been delighted to be anywhere .

While sensitive to the appearence of caving in to national opinion, there is no doubt that bowl officials have made efforts to temper the criticism.

Predictably, however, something had to go wrong. The first problem came when the Fiesta Bowl announced it would set aside $100,000 for each participating school to establish minority scholarships.

Executive director Junker said, in announcing the offer, that the Fiesta Bowl wanted to “make a positive statement about what a football game and a community can be.”

No sooner had the offer been made than Michael Williams, assistant secretary of education, ruled that such exclusionary scholarships violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Fiesta Bowl officials were not alone in their anger at this.

Williams was called on the carpet by his boss, President Bush. The Department of Education quickly issued a clarification that only served to further confuse everyone. The bottom line for the Fiesta Bowl is that Louisville and Alabama will get the money for minority scholarships.

The two bowls also have included more than a nod to the issue of civil rights and King’s life. Indeed, both will have halftime programs that appear to be more like civics lessons than the usual baton-twirling, band-marching, flag-waving extravaganza.

The Fiesta Bowl’s halftime show will be a tribute to King. NBC-TV has agreed to air up to 5 1/2 minutes of it. The Alabama band and football team will wear shoulder patches in King’s honor, and the school will present a portrait of King to the bowl.

The Fiesta Bowl’s pregame show will be dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the Bill of Rights.

The Copper Bowl is locked into a Salute to the Armed Forces theme for its halftime but will include certain King elements. Near the end of the halftime show, an excerpt from King’s famous “I have a dream” speech will be played over the public address system. The players from both teams will come onto the field and stand in opposite end zones. A drill team will form the letters MLK on the field. At the end of the excerpt, the band will play “God Bless America.”

The players have been struggling to walk the politically correct line in the midst of the controversy. On the one hand, there is the symbolism of coming to Arizona after it voted down a paid King holiday. None of the schools, and certainly none of the players, wanted to appear to condone the vote.

On the other hand, there is the compelling athletic consideration of being invited to a bowl game, with the attendant hoopla and exposure that it brings. None of the schools, and certainly none of the players, wanted to miss that.

“I think a lot of people blew it out of proportion,” said Stacy Harrison, a safety on Alabama’s football team. “They tried to bring the football team into a political aspect. We won the right to play in this bowl game.”

Harrison, along with other Alabama players, has had the initials MLK shaved into the back of his closely cropped hair. He said that not coming to the Fiesta Bowl “would take away from what we’ve earned. I’m not saying a boycott couldn’t be right, but we’ve earned the right to come here. It’s a big-time bowl.”

That’s about the extent to which the players are addressing the King controversy, by now a tired subject for them.

And while no significant demonstrations or disturbances are expected, there is always the possibility of an isolated incident.

The Copper Bowl’s Miller said his sponsor, Domino’s Pizza, has experienced an unorganized, spotty boycott. But he expects a quiet New Year’s Eve, except for the group that has announced it will picket outside the stadium, protesting the building of a hazardous-waste dump site in the area.

“I guess we are just the staging area for the protest,” Miller said. “Oh well, it could be worse, I guess.”