When their team finished as undefeated co-champions of the Big Ten, Iowa fans assumed the Hawkeyes would go to the Rose Bowl. Those thoughts were crystallized further when Ohio State went 13-0 to gain a spot in the Fiesta Bowl for the national championship.
But when the bowl bids were announced last weekend, those wishing to follow Iowa had to audible on their travel plans. Instead of Pasadena, Calif., the destination is Miami and the Orange Bowl.
“I had a few people call saying they’d booked their flights to California and bought their Rose Bowl tickets on the Internet,” said Connie Flescher, manager of Younkers Travel Service in Des Moines. “Now they want to go to the Orange Bowl, and they could be out money for both trips.”
Flesher hopes to sell 160 packages at $1,399 per person to fill a charter to the Orange Bowl. Since Iowa’s season ended Nov. 16, she has been taking names but hadn’t charged anyone money until she was sure of the destination.
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The Orange Bowl package will run a few hundred dollars cheaper than the Rose Bowl package would have.
The Iowa Alumni Association had about 3,000 requests for the travel package, but Chris Bavolak said that switching gears from the Rose to the Orange won’t be too difficult.
“We’ve just got to get done in two or three days what we usually get done in a couple of weeks,” he said Tuesday. “I’ve heard some rumblings from people who are upset we’re not in the Rose Bowl, but not that many actual complaints.”
Bavolak said he’s received a number of e-mails and telephone calls from Oklahoma fans who had bought Orange Bowl tickets and are interested in swapping now that the Sooners are headed to the Rose Bowl.
Iowa expects to sell out its allotment of 25,000 tickets.
Feeling unhappy: Getting the Rose Bowl to join was a key component for the birth of the Bowl Championship Series more than five years ago. For the first time, all the major bowls, plus the Big Ten and Pac-10 Conferences, were on the same page when it came to matching teams for a “national championship” game.
For the second consecutive year, though, the Rose Bowl will not have its traditional Big Ten-Pac-10 game. Last year, the Rose had the national title game (Miami-Nebraska). This year, the Orange is staging an East Coast “Rose Bowl” by matching Southern Cal vs. Iowa.
The current four-year BCS contract runs through the 2005 season. When the negotiations for another version of the BCS begin over the next 12 to 18 months, there is talk that the Rose will make noise about pulling out.
“It would be premature to answer any question like that,” Rose Bowl executive director Mitch Dorger said. “We’ll be discussing among ourselves the lessons that we learned.”
Feeling left out: Nine teams are staying home even though they qualified for a bowl game with enough victories and were not on NCAA probation.
The only team from a Bowl Championship Series conference not selected was Texas A&M (6-6), which had the excuse of a coaching change to not go bowling.
(Alabama, Kentucky and California won the required number of games but are on NCAA probation and banned from the postseason.)
The Mid-American Conference, which has deals with two bowl games (GMAC Mobile and Motor City) had five teams that were not invited.
South Florida had the best record of the teams not invited. The Bulls, a Division I-A independent team that will play in Conference USA next season, finished 9-2 with victories over two bowl teams, North Texas and Southern Mississippi.
“The NCAA let this happen, and the NCAA is a big joke,” South Florida senior wide receiver Ryan Hearn told the Tampa Tribune. “It’s just all about money. I won’t watch the bowl games this year. Why should I?”
The Bulls were ranked 23rd in Jerry Palm’s BCS standings and are the first non-probation team to finish in the BCS top 25 and not receive a bowl invitation.
Stay home: The following teams won the required games to become eligible for the postseason but did not receive a bowl invitation.
TEAM CONF. W-L
South Florida Ind. 9-2
Bowling Green MAC 9-3
Northern Illinois MAC 8-4
Miami (Ohio) MAC 7-5
Central Florida MAC 7-5
New Mexico State MAC 7-5
Texas A&M Big 12 6-6
Ball State MAC 6-6
Connecticut Ind. 6-6
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Note: Alabama (10-3), Kentucky (7-5) and California (7-5) are on NCAA probation and banned from participating in a bowl.
Woman to woman: The Fiesta Bowl will be the first national championship game in which the presidents of both schools are women.
Karen Holbrook became Ohio State’s 13th president Oct. 1. She’s the first OSU president since 1968 who can boast of having an undefeated season, as the Buckeyes are 13-0 going into their Jan. 3 match with the defending national champions.
Should Holbrook seek championship advice, she can ask her counterpart. Miami President Donna Shalala became the school’s fifth president on June 1, 2001, so she was on board for the Hurricanes’ victory in the Rose Bowl last season. Shalala was chancellor at Wisconsin from 1987-93 and Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 1993-2000.
Official announcement: The Big 12 Conference will supply the officiating crew for the Fiesta Bowl. The Big East Conference was scheduled to supply the officials, but with Miami, a Big East member, playing in the game, the change had to be made.
Conference battle: ESPN will present an inaugural award–the Bowl Challenge Cup–to the conference with the best winning percentage during the 2002-03 bowl season. Any league with three or more teams in the postseason will be eligible.
Broken record: Nebraska is playing in a bowl for the 34th consecutive season, extending the school’s NCAA record. But the Huskers’ 7-6 record and 3-5 finish in the Big 12 Conference is not exciting the Big Red Nation. On Monday, the first day that tickets could be sold to Nebraska’s Independence Bowl game with Mississippi, only 510 were sold by the school’s ticket office.
Jack Haley clone: When UCLA faces New Mexico in the Las Vegas Bowl, the Bruins’ interim coach will be Ed Kezirian. “I have 17 years of coaching experience and 10 in administration,” Kezirian said. He is the team’s academic adviser. The Los Angeles Times referred to Kezirian as the team’s “towel waver” because of his previous sideline duties.
Baker’s dozen: With most teams playing a 12-game schedule, many coaches and media “experts” believed that it would difficult to finish undefeated. The BCS championship game, though, matches 13-0 Ohio State and 12-0 Miami. And only three other teams finished with one loss–Georgia (12-1), Iowa (11-1) and Boise State (11-1). Seven Division I-A teams finished with two losses–Oklahoma was 11-2, while Texas, Kansas State, Washington State, Southern Cal, Notre Dame and Marshall were 10-2.