How the Fiesta Bowl Match Was Made

By MICHAEL WILBON

Nov. 30, 1986 12 AM PT

The Washington Post

Don Meyers, chairman of the Fiesta Bowl team-selection committee, was on the telephone with representatives from Penn State and Miami a few weeks ago. The possibility of a college football Super Bowl was within reach, but Penn State and Miami had one concern, that the Fiesta was in the middle of an unattractive bowl traffic jam on New Year’s afternoon.

“No problem,” Meyers said, without blinking. “We’ll move it to Jan. 2 prime time.”

Penn State, Miami and a few people at NBC had the same reaction.

Impossible.

Meyers didn’t see why not. He proposed the idea to an NBC vice president, and by the end of the week NBC and both schools had agreed to a deal. Meyers, an aggressive, wheeler-dealer corporate attorney in Phoenix, got what he wanted.

The Hurricanes will play second-ranked and undefeated Penn State Friday night Jan. 2, pre-empting “Miami Vice” and going head-to-head with “Dallas” on CBS.

In its 16th year, the Fiesta Bowl has shaken the New Year’s Day bowls with some early planning and nervy, innovative thinking, leaving the folks at the Cotton, Sugar and Orange bowls upset because their games this year don’t mean much.

“The Citrus Bowl and the Gator Bowl worked very hard, but Don Meyers was very aggressive with this,” Miami’s director of athletics, Sam Jankovich, said. “For whatever reasons, the Fiesta had everything in place much earlier than anybody else.”

While the Gator and Citrus bowl people (the only other legitimate bowls that could match two independent teams) were doing their best, Meyers and Fiesta Bowl executive director Bruce Skinner were doing better.

Not only did Meyers come up with the prime-time idea, the Fiesta also gave Miami an escape clause (if Penn State had been upset by Notre Dame or Pittsburgh). “Those two things were big,” Jankovich said.

So now, Tempe, Ariz.--a suburb of Phoenix--will be the site for the national championship game. And the people who pay close attention to college football are paying even closer attention to the Fiesta executives who pulled it off.

On Oct. 19, two days before the Alabama-Penn State game, Meyers and Skinner decided that if Penn State won, the Nittany Lions and Miami could wind up undefeated down the road, and the Orange, Cotton, Sugar and Rose couldn’t accommodate them because of conference obligations.

Meyers found it a bit ironic. Two years ago he told the NCAA’s postseason football committee that if they didn’t limit spending to $2 million there soon would be corporate sponsors and bidding wars. He was told, in effect, “Nonsense.”

Now, here was the Fiesta, with Sunkist as its sponsor, ready to more than double the payoff to $2.4 million so “the two teams wouldn’t be penalized for not going to another New Year’s Day game,” Meyers said.

The Citrus and Gator, a step behind, matched the offer. But Meyers and the Fiesta clearly were making all the right moves.

At one stage, it appeared Jankovich favored the Fiesta but Miami Coach Jimmy Johnson wanted the Citrus because the game would be in Florida, which he thought would help recruiting.

There was little if any movement until Meyers came up with the prime-time move and the escape clause. It was a second bold and successful move for Meyers, who last year got Michigan (away from the Cotton Bowl) by promising it a bid regardless of whether it lost the season finale. Michigan accepted, then beat Ohio State to go 9-1-1.

“Don knows where your button is,” Skinner said. “He doesn’t quit. If he gets a cold shoulder on one thing, he’ll try something else.”

Meyers is one of the original members of the Fiesta Bowl committee, which was formed in 1971. Five of the first seven games had Western Athletic Conference champion Arizona State (whose 70,000-seat Sun Devil Stadium is the site of the game). When Arizona State went to the Pac-10 in 1978, the Fiesta set its sights higher.

In 1982, the Fiesta moved from Christmas Day to Jan. 1.

“Nobody thought we should go New Year’s Day because the other bowls were so well-entrenched,” Skinner said. “We had to convince the NCAA postseason football committee and they turned us down. But we appealed to the NCAA council and they overruled (partly because Meyers told NCAA chief Walter Byers that an antitrust suit could be on his desk, soon).”

The youngest bowl never finished last in the New Year’s Day ratings, and once finished No. 2 behind the Rose (the 1982 game between Penn State and USC).

The Fiesta also prides itself on hospitality and is throwing two pre-game black-tie galas and a $100,000 New Year’s night media party.

“The objective is to top a Super Bowl party,” Meyers said. “The downside to all this is that it will cause the conferences and the bowls to question their position. Does it make sense for Nebraska or Oklahoma to tie itself up with the Orange when it can make as much money in any other game, some years with a chance to play for a national title?

“I know we’re not going to have this situation every year,” Meyers said. “But you can bet we’re going to make the best of it while we have it.”