Kansas State Contingent 25,000 Strong

Kansas State fans are proving to be a boon for the Alamo Bowl, even though some once threatened to stay home in protest.

In the course of a few weeks, the San Antonio-based Alamo Bowl has gone from being a game that had never attracted a top-10 team to one that will probably have the largest contingent of fans from one team at any bowl this season.

Kansas State officials said they’ll bring about 25,000 fans to Tuesday’s game against unranked Purdue. The support comes after some Wildcat fans said they’d stay home from the lower-echelon bowl after 11-1 and fourth-ranked Kansas State was passed over by the Orange and Sugar bowls.

“I think the fans feel a little sorry for the players,” said Mike O’Brien, Kansas State’s assistant athletic director for fund-raising.

The game probably will attract 60,000 in a stadium with a capacity of 65,000, said Bob Gennarelli, assistant executive director of the Alamo Bowl.

“We were the luckiest bowl this season,” he said.

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Even though instant replay is the subject of renewed debate in the NFL, it isn’t likely to show up in college football any time soon, NCAA officials and coaches said.

Replay probably won’t even be a topic of discussion at the NCAA rules committee meeting Feb. 14-16 in San Diego. Ensuring that video equipment would be available for every college game would be too expensive for some programs, even though some coaches favor it.

“We make rules for over 700 schools, and 700 schools can’t have the same equipment--that would be the big objection,” said John Adams, former head of officials for the Western Athletic Conference and a member of the rules committee.

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Although they’re both trying to forget their seasons, Auburn receiver Karsten Bailey and Louisiana State quarterback Herb Tyler can appreciate where they are.

Instead of practicing for a bowl game, the two will play in today’s Blue-Gray all-star game at Montgomery, Ala. It’s much different from where they thought they’d be at the end of their senior seasons.

Bailey planned to take Auburn back to the Southeastern Conference title game, and Tyler expected to have LSU in the national title hunt. Neither came even close to happening.

All that’s left for these two, and most of the players participating in the Blue-Gray game, is trying to impress NFL scouts.

Tyler is abandoning the quarterback position he played at LSU and trying his skills at running back.

For Bailey, he’s trying to show scouts he is the player he was during his junior year. He finished his Auburn career with 150 catches for 2,174 yards and 17 touchdowns, but his production was limited this season as Auburn’s offense struggled. He had 43 catches for 651 yards.