Rose Bowl Ticket Flap Prompts New Rules : College football: The U.S. Department of Transportation trying to make sure tour operators have game tickets before selling packages to fans.

The U.S. Department of Transportation is planning to regulate certain special-event tours in connection with football bowl games this season as a result of the 1994 Rose Bowl ticket controversy, federal officials said recently.

The proposed expanded protection of Super Bowl tour rules comes as a response to complaints filed by almost 800 University of Wisconsin fans who were left stranded outside the Rose Bowl in Pasadena last winter without tickets to the game against UCLA. Many of the fans had to payinflated prices to scalpers to see Wisconsin play in the Rose Bowl for the first time in 31 years.

The proposed rules would be expanded to include such intercollegiate events as bowl games and the NCAA Final Four basketball tournament. The regulations are expected to be codified after public hearings are concluded this fall.

“We will not tolerate ‘personal fouls’ committed against sports fans,” said Transportation Secretary Federico Pena, whose department oversees air transportation.

James Doyle, Wisconsin attorney general who sued three ticket brokers and blamed UCLA for an inflated ticket market, suggested the government broaden the rules to include the Olympics and World Cup soccer finals.

The Super Bowl rule requires air tour operators to have game tickets in hand or a written contract for the tickets before it can advertise a travel package as including tickets.

Those who do not receive their promised game tickets must be refunded the entire tour price, a department spokesman said.

In writing to federal officials, Doyle said the rules should be limited to competitive events instead of concerts or other entertainment because the participants in and locations of the activities are determined close to the event date.

The NCAA’s Special Events Committee has not discussed the proposed guidelines, but staff liaison Keith Martin, NCAA director of accounting, said it is not considered a major issue.

Although many within the NCAA automatically fear any government intervention in college athletics, Thomas Hansen, commissioner of the Pacific 10 Conference, welcomed the consumer protection.

“It’s a little bit like selling cruise packages when you don’t have a ship,” said Hansen, a member of the Special Events Committee. “(The NCAA) can’t reach out and control them. We certainly want people to be able to buy with confidence.”

That confidence was eroded in the Rose Bowl situation when it was learned that a UCLA football booster, Angelo M. Mazzone III, and his business partner might have earned as much as $400,000 from tour packages put together through 4,000 Rose Bowl tickets obtained from UCLA.

The transaction angered football fans from UCLA and Wisconsin who were unable to get extra tickets or had to pay scalpers’ prices to attend the Rose Bowl game.

A Wisconsin law firm filed a class-action lawsuit against UCLA on behalf of Badger fans. A Wisconsin court has taken UCLA’s motion for dismissal under advisement.

Jim Olson, the Madison, Wis., attorney who filed the suit, was skeptical that expanded regulations will protect fans.

“It seems to me to be a politicians’ approach to deal with a problem on its periphery,” he said. “They’re saying it is a violation to break a contract, and I don’t know if we need a law to tell us that.”