Oldest Bowl Game Is Dialed In

The last holdout is a holdout no more.

Long a rose by any name, the Rose Bowl got a new name Thursday. After 96 years of being presented by the Tournament of Roses Committee, the game becomes “the Rose Bowl, presented by AT&T;” on Jan. 1.

Or, as Harriman Cronk, chairman of the Tournament of Roses football committee, put it, “Ma Bell is joining the Granddaddy of Them All.”

The actual contract is between ABC television and AT&T;, and the marriage provides ABC revenue to help fund its seven-year agreement that pays the Rose Bowl $19 million annually. That deal is a part of ABC’s contract with the bowl alliance, an association of four games designed to determine a national champion for college football.

The overall arrangement calls for ABC to pay the alliance bowls--the Rose, Orange, Sugar and Fiesta--a total of $76 million annually. It also allows the network to cross-market the games and their advertisers.

The difference between the Rose and the others is the sponsorship designation. The Fiesta is actually the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, and it is joined in the alliance by the Nokia Sugar Bowl and the FedEx Orange Bowl.

“We violently were--and still are--against a title sponsor,” Cronk said.

So don’t look for a telephone at midfield.

The Rose will refuse to allow corporate logos on the field or on the players’ uniforms--a standard at the other games--or even in prominent parts of the stadium, leaving such signage to be superimposed on television screens.

“It’s not going to be AT&T; all over the field, AT&T; in every nook and cranny,” Cronk said. “We told ABC that it could handle things like that electronically.”

Whatever happens is going to be a major change in Pasadena.

For many years the Rose Bowl refused to entertain entreaties from corporations wishing to align their names with that of college football’s oldest bowl game. The Rose was able to do so because the stadium was the largest of all the bowl facilities, and because its television contract was the best of all the bowl games.

That changed when the bowl alliance came into being, and it changed even more when it successfully wooed the Rose Bowl for membership.

The game was faced with having to offer more money to participating teams--more than double the $6 million it had offered when it was the richest of all the games.

A contract with ABC television provided part of that increase, as did a hike in ticket prices.

Those tickets were increased again Thursday, from $75 to $110, and for fewer seats. An ongoing renovation for the Rose Bowl eventually will decrease capacity from nearly 100,000 to just over 90,000.

Even at the higher price, “we still won’t have enough seats for everyone who wants to come,” Cronk said.

Thursday’s announcement came one day after AT&T; announced it was taking control of cable television powerhouse Tele-Communications Inc., in an all-stock transaction valued at $48 billion.

“The TCI deal took 10 days to negotiate, this one was 18 months in the works,” AT&T; spokesman Burke Stinson said. “While the deals were separate and apart, we think both are good for AT&T;’s image.”