Sponsor Cites Freeze for Dropping Fiesta Bowl : Football: Orange growers, devastated by weather in the San Joaquin Valley, are cutting back staff, commitments.

Sunkist Growers Inc. bowed out Monday as title sponsor of the Fiesta Bowl, but organizers of the New Year’s Day game said they are in no hurry to find a replacement.

“We plan to take the next six months and review an array of options,” said bowl president Chuck Johnson.

He said several companies have asked about backing the game since Sunkist became the bowl’s sponsor six years ago.

The board hopes to land another attractive sponsor by proceeding slowly, Johnson said.

“Even if we went forward with a game that paid less money, you’d do that rather than sign up a sponsor who didn’t have a quality product,” Johnson said.

Sunkist backed Fiesta Bowl events since the first game in 1971 and became sponsor of the game in 1985. The nonprofit cooperative will continue to sponsor the Fiesta Bowl Parade, said Sunkist spokesman Curt Anderson of Van Nuys.

The Fiesta Bowl paid 1991 participants Louisville and Alabama $2.6 million each, including $100,000 each for minority scholarships.

Louisville won the game, 38-6, but was No. 14 in the final polls.

Other recent Fiesta Bowl winners have ranked far higher, but Fiesta planners were glad just to sign two ranked teams after the backlash against Arizona voters’ rejection of a paid state holiday for Martin Luther King Jr.

However, Anderson said the King Day issue was not a factor.

He said a late-December freeze in California’s San Joaquin Valley, which produces 90% of Sunkist’s crop, forced the co-op to reduce everything from staff size to its advertising budget.

“Basically, it was the freeze devastation, the loss of revenue we’re expecting and really cutting back--that was the thing that tipped the tide,” he said.

The Fiesta Bowl and NBC reached a six-year agreement in 1989 which was expected to allow the bowl to offer each team $4.8 million by 1995. Johnson said Sunkist’s pullout took away a “six-figure” source of revenue, but he added that the television contract was more important financially.

Another sponsor could increase the money available to lure highly ranked teams, hold it at projected levels or reduce it, Johnson said.