COMMENTARY : Spending Spree Left This Crowd in Red

With apologies to John Maynard Keynes, supply and demand met in Pasadena on New Year’s Day, when the price of loyalty was set at $500 a soul.

It was the contribution to the California economy made by fans from Wisconsin, the tariff lavished on anybody who would sell a seat to the Rose Bowl and allow them to turn a Southern California stadium into Camp Randall, minus the wind-chill factor.

The game generated one of the great loaves-and-fishes tricks of our time, a 21,000-ticket Big Ten allocation turning into about 70,000 wearing red and chasing bratwurst with beer while they drowned out UCLA boosters who bought 41,636 tickets.

That’s 70,000 plus 41,606, which totals about 10,000 more than the Rose Bowl will allow, even with fire marshals out of town.

Can’t happen. And it didn’t happen. At least it didn’t happen without help from those with Westwood connections who have spent the past eight seasons complaining that their Bruins were otherwise occupied on New Year’s Day.

Players got four tickets, and some wanted as many as 30 for family and friends. There was a student allotment, and 4,600 tickets were sold there at $46 each. The 21,000 season-ticket holders got a seat-for-seat offer, and athletic donors were allowed to buy a few extra in recognition of their generosity.

The Pacific 10 Conference got about 7,500, to be split among the membership at 500 per school, 1,000 to USC because the Rose Bowl is in Southern California. Reporters were allowed to buy from the Pac-10, and many did.

The Tournament of Roses Committee got most of the rest, save for a public-lottery sale of 4,500.

So what happened? Why the sea of Badger red in the Rose Bowl?

Somewhere, somehow, about 45,000-50,000 residential, if not emotional, ties to the West Coast were severed by a checkbook. Turning $46 into $500 was a temptation many could not resist, particularly when a broker put cards on windshields in UCLA campus parking lots, offering top dollar for tickets, “no questions asked.”

It’s called the secondary market, and there is evidence of a tertiary market or, for that matter, fourth- and fifth-place markets. Apparently, tickets changed hands over and over again as they increased in value because of the tremendous number of Wisconsin fans who had gone without this sort of excitement since 1963.

To them, price was no object. Two weeks before the Rose Bowl, $180 was offered. The frenzy apparently was fed by Christmas cash and the price built to $500 by New Year’s.

The process was spurred by those who took their fun and football team personally, and was further prodded by a coach who learned the art of poor-mouth on the staff of Lou Holtz at Notre Dame.

Barry Alvarez talked of UCLA’s home field advantage from the minute Wisconsin accepted the Rose Bowl bid, thereby inciting folks who call each other cheeseheads, but dare you to do it.

He got help from Las Vegas, which established the Badgers as decided underdogs, and from history, which showed Wisconsin football has lacked merit since Roosevelt was president. Teddy Roosevelt.

“C’mon, what do the UCLA players and fans really think about Wisconsin?” the talk-show host in Milwaukee asked the Southern California reporter. “They really think we’re in a rural, dairy state, nothing but rubes and farmers, right? And wouldn’t UCLA rather be playing Michigan or Ohio State, the big names of the Big Ten? UCLA isn’t taking Wisconsin seriously, is it?”

As it became clear late in the week that enough tickets could not be had at any price to supply Wisconsinites who wanted to be there--was anybody left in Madison to watch the bank?--the demand for, and the price of, tickets kept increasing in huge jumps. And by game time, it seemed obvious that much of the Badger demand had been supplied by Southern Californians who would have been rooting differently, had they been there.

Ten minutes before kickoff Saturday, Badger fans streamed from parties on the Brookside Park golf course into the Rose Bowl in such force that the tunnels were blocked and progress was made by inches.

UCLA fans sat on their hands.

Alvarez had told his players to expect a home-field atmosphere, and they got it. Badger fans got into the spirit of things, and UCLA players picked a lousy time to get into the trash business. The Bruins talked a good game, then fell behind, 14-3, before they self-destructed.

In the stands, Wisconsin fans’ emotions, already sky-high, went into outer space. In some sections, it got as ugly as a Raider game. UCLA fans, normally placid, became moribund.

UCLA has a corps of rooters that ebbs and flows with the team’s record, but seldom far in either direction because of a general malaise. When you can draw only 40,000 this season to watch the Bruins, on a three-game winning streak, play a key game against Washington in the Rose Bowl, you’ve said it all.

Another key Bruin game was Oct. 30, against Arizona, when enough Wildcat fans were in evidence to give UCLA a crowd of 66,656 in the Rose Bowl.

UCLA won that game, 37-17, and it was the high-water mark of the Bruin season as far as fan emotions went.

The low was Saturday in the Rose Bowl, for a road game at home.