Andersen Promotes a Win-Win Situation : Football: Orange County Sports Assn. director’s enthusiasm has added passion to Anaheim Stadium bowl match-ups.

All around Don Andersen’s third-floor office at Anaheim Stadium there are reminders of how the game should be played. There are photos and other sports memorabilia hanging from the walls. None captures Andersen’s notion as well as a photo of a joyful Todd Yert, forefinger raised in victory, receiving the MVP trophy for Colorado State in last year’s Freedom Bowl.

“That says what it’s all about,” Andersen said.

Andersen sees passion when he looks across the room at Yert each day. More than anything else, that’s what Andersen hoped to establish when he settled into his command post as executive director of the Orange County Sports Assn., the group that runs the Freedom Bowl and the Disneyland Pigskin Classic.

In his first attempt, Andersen delivered the most exciting Freedom Bowl in seven games. Thursday’s Pigskin Classic II figures to be another thriller, matching No. 1 Florida State against Brigham Young and Heisman Trophy winner Ty Detmer.

When Andersen took over in February, 1990, the Freedom Bowl was badly in need of CPR and the first Pigskin game last August loomed as a white elephant, a first-rate Colorado-Tennessee matchup be damned.

As it turned out, Andersen was something of an expert on elephants, white and otherwise.

After all, he promoted Dumbo Downs, a day of racing pachyderms at Cal State Fullerton, in the early 1960s. A crowd of 10,000 watched and Sports Illustrated featured the races.

Later, he graduated to publicist for the Southern Section, then spent seven years as assistant sports information director at USC. In the 1970s, he promoted the World Football League, about as tough a sell as there was. He then moved on to public relations director of the expansion Seattle Seahawks, which wasn’t a whole lot easier.

He had been an associate athletic director at Chapman College when the OCSA sent out its distress signal.

Andersen’s first order of business was to find that elusive passion. It was too late to do much about the Colorado-Tennessee matchup, a game that already had been set by former OCSA director Tom Starr.

The game turned out to be a masterpiece, a 31-31 tie, but the crowd was about 33,000, filling less than half of the 70,000-seat stadium. The turnout was all the more disappointing because Colorado went on to win a share of the national championship.

With that dress rehearsal out of the way, Andersen turned his attention to Freedom Bowl VII. Aware that the previous game had been a disaster on the field and at the turnstiles, Andersen was determined to find two teams that would be thrilled to be in a bowl game. He didn’t want another consolation bowl, as Washington’s 34-7 rout of Florida in Freedom Bowl VI had been. He couldn’t bear to watch another listless crowd bored to tears in a half-empty stadium.

What he and 41,450 others got was Colorado State 32, Oregon 31; Coach Earle Bruce carried around on the shoulders of Ram players; Colorado State fans shaking the stadium to its foundation after Yert’s 52-yard fourth-quarter touchdown run clinched the school’s first bowl victory.

At the OCSA postgame party, Andersen walked into the room and received a standing ovation from the membership.

Now that was more like it.

“It was like taking over for a coach who had gone 0-12,” Andersen said of his first year on the job. “There was only one way to go and that was up. I was coming into a place where they had made minimal progress.”

Andersen found an ally in Rob Halvaks, newly hired as associate director. Halvaks’ training had been on the financial side of the ball and together they make a perfect team.

Right away, Andersen and Halvaks agreed the Freedom Bowl should stop tilting at windmills. Was it really necessary to scout Notre Dame? Or Miami? Or Auburn? If by some strange fate Notre Dame did land in the Freedom Bowl instead of an Orange or Fiesta Bowl with national championship implications, surely it would be a dramatic comedown; would the Fighting Irish or their fans care to come to Anaheim?

Certainly, it had been the case when Washington (7-4) and Florida (7-4) dragged themselves into town after disappointing 1989 seasons.

“He (Andersen) is always looking for a new hook,” Halvaks said. “He’s not the type of guy who does things just because that’s the way they were done before. He always gives things a fresh look.”

Certainly, Colorado State, which hadn’t been to a bowl game in 42 years, and Oregon, which was looking for its first nine-victory season since 1948, provided a different story.

“We zeroed in on Colorado State right away,” Halvaks said. “Oregon, a Pac-10 team, added a great dimension.”

Ticket sales boomed as never before for a Freedom Bowl. Colorado State sold more than 11,000 presale tickets and Oregon 17,800.

According to Andersen, about $30 million was spent by fans in town for the game, the biggest boost to local tourism in the game’s history.

Andersen and Halvaks already are plotting for December. California and Stanford figure to fit the Pac-10 role played by Oregon last season. And a school from the East Coast, or maybe even a return visit by Colorado State, will be targeted.

They also have learned who not to invite.

“Washington is a perfect example,” Halvaks said. “They came to the ’89 Freedom Bowl and sold 7,000 tickets. A year later, they sold 40,000 to the Rose Bowl. Ohio State was one-yard away from going to the Rose Bowl, but took only 3,000 fans to the Liberty Bowl and it’s practically in their back yard.

“The University of Arizona was interested in coming. They also had three home basketball games that week. It’s a basketball school. They went to the Aloha Bowl and brought 300 people.”

So where does Andersen lead the OCSA from here?

He seems to have found a winning formula for the Freedom Bowl, and he has learned that the Pigskin Classic cannot attract sellout crowds in Orange County on No. 1 rankings and Heisman Trophy winners alone. At week’s end, about 30,000 tickets had been distributed and a crowd of about 40,000 was expected for Thursday’s Florida State-BYU game.

“We continue to get more and more calls (from teams wanting to play in the Pigskin Classic),” he said. “It’s a showcase game like Monday Night Football. Houston tried to get in this year to get a (David) Klingler-Detmer matchup, but we have to be out of the stadium by midnight.”

Most likely, Andersen will arrange upcoming games around USC, UCLA, Notre Dame and another highly ranked team. Local ties are imperative if the game is to be a sellout. The thinking is USC and UCLA have big followings in Orange County and Notre Dame has fans and alumni nationwide.

“We feel we need a local team,” Andersen said. “We’re hoping to get one of the three in the next two years. We thought BYU would give us that (a local fan base) this year, but they haven’t to this point. They’ve sold 6,000 tickets and we were hoping for 16,000.

“Even when we express this to the board, they said, ‘Yeah, but we’re so far ahead of where we’ve ever been before. . . .’

“We’ve had a different philosophy right from the start. Be it luck, be it whatever, it’s worked.”