Main Event Turns Into Warm-Up Act : Fiesta Bowl: Instead of national championship rematch between Notre Dame and Florida State, it’s Miami vs. Arizona.

Sadly for those who work so hard to put it on, this year’s Fiesta Bowl seems to have become the forgotten bowl.

Although the game is a matchup between two nationally ranked 9-2 powers, No. 10 Miami and No. 16 Arizona, and does carry the prestige of being a New Year’s Day game (10 a.m., Channel 4), it also has the feel of a consolation prize for two programs that had illusions of grandeur, i.e. a national championship, late in the season.

Miami had lost on Oct. 9 at Florida State, but had climbed back up the rankings. Arizona had won its first seven games and had risen to No. 7 going into its game against UCLA on Oct. 30 in Pasadena.

But after the Bruins stomped on the vaunted Wildcat defense, 37-17, the second shoe dropped on Arizona in a 24-20 stunner at Cal on Nov. 13. A week after that, Nov. 20, No. 4 Miami lost again, 17-14, at West Virginia.

So the Fiesta Bowl, which seemed for so long this season to be the likely landing spot for such things as a national championship rematch between Florida State and Notre Dame, or some sort of battle for No. 1 involving unbeaten West Virginia, is pretty much reduced to an NBC warm-up act for later higher-profile matchups on the network between Notre Dame and Texas A&M; in the Cotton Bowl and Florida State and Nebraska in the Orange Bowl.

Ever since Fiesta Bowl officials got the 1987 No. 1 vs. No. 2 game in Miami and Penn State and the ’89 No. 1 vs. No. 3 game in Notre Dame and West Virginia, the bowl gods have not smiled on the game in the Valley of the Sun. As recently as two years ago, that noted football powerhouse Louisville played here. Moreover, it won, beating a terrible Alabama team that was ranked No. 25 coming in and nowhere afterward. That game drew a TV rating of 6.2, tiny for a New Year’s Day bowl outing.

The local promoters have tried their best. The game slogan is “The Desert Storm Meets the Hurricane Swarm.” But even such hyperbole about the respective Arizona and Miami defensive prowess has apparently not prompted even much home-team enthusiasm for this one.

According to Arizona Daily Star columnist Jack McGruder, Miami has turned over about one-third of its 12,500 ticket allotment to Arizona. And while Tucson is just down the road a couple of hours from Tempe, the game is being played in Sun Devil Stadium, home of Arizona’s archrival, Arizona State. Those ASU fans who are not particularly civic-minded are greeting this one with yawns.

It is not difficult to understand a certain degree of ambivalence by Miami fans over this one, because the game will mark the first time since 1990 that their Hurricanes ha ve n’t been playing on New Year’s Day with a shot at the national title. Entering this season, Miami had been ranked in the top three the last seven years and had won four national titles in that time. So other than the fact that a victory over Arizona would give Coach Dennis Erickson and his Hurricanes the school’s ninth consecutive 10-victory season, huge incentive is lacking.

The incentive for Coach Dick Tomey’s Arizona team might be larger. The Wildcats have been in bowl games four of the last five years, but the last time they were in a New Year’s Day bowl was 1949 at the Salad Bowl, where they lost to Drake, 14-13.

Actually, the rematch angle is the best thing this game has going for it. In 1992, a high-flying Miami team squeaked past a rugged defensive unit from Arizona in a memorable 8-7 game at Miami. From that stemmed the “Desert Swarm” label for Arizona’s defense, and the result, despite being a victory, knocked the Hurricanes from No. 1 to No. 2 in the national polls. Arizona’s Steve McLaughlin, then a sophomore, barely missed a 51-yard field goal at the end.

Something will have to give in this game--Miami’s high-powered offense or Arizona’s rugged defense.

Miami scored 30 or more points in all but four of its games and ran up an average of 431 yards a game. It has two productive quarterbacks in sophomore Ryan Collins, the projected starter today, and junior Frank Costa, who lost his job to Collins in the sixth game of the season but still played enough to pass for 1,324 yards. Collins passed for 1,555. Miami has three running backs capable of big games--James Stewart gained 649 yards, Donnell Bennett 594 and Larry Jones 428.

For Arizona, All-American nose guard Rob Waldrop and flamboyant defensive end Tedy Bruschi lead a unit that was tops in the country with a rushing yield of only 30 yards a game.

Arizona’s offense is led by tailback Chuck Levy, who rushed for 567 yards and nine touchdowns, piled up 1,032 all-purpose yards and also stepped in at quarterback a couple of times when starter Dan White was injured.