Analysis
Bowl games couldn't keep up with times
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Writer
The bowl games formerly known as the Aloha and O'ahu Bowls officially left Hawai'i on Friday when the NCAA Football Certification Subcommittee gave its blessing to their relocation to the continent.
But the chain of events that ultimately put them on planes to San Francisco and Seattle, respectively, began years ago.
For it was the shifting bowl landscape that did more to bring about the departure of the state's only holiday season college football bowl games than Aloha Sports Inc. executive director Fritz Rohlfing's appearance before the NCAA this week.
Games that were essentially made-for-TV contests with Hawai'i backdrops from the beginning slowly lost their limited appeal to local audiences as the ability to secure marquee teams declined and the University of Hawai'i's fortunes ebbed and flowed.
When the Aloha Bowl was certified 20 years ago this month, the brainchild of the late promoter Mackay Yanagisawa, it was but the 13th bowl in a relatively uncrowded industry; a tropical lure at a time when bowl games were still viewed as postseason rewards and the TV dial wasn't dotted with them.
Which was how it managed to book a series of marquee teams: Penn State (1983), Notre Dame ('84), Alabama and Southern Cal ('85), UCLA and Florida ('87) etc. that were the envy of many non-New Year's Day games.
But as the number of networks grew and the demand for holiday season programming climbed, bowls were viewed as exposure necessities and their number proliferated.
Soon, every furniture.com and micronpc.com bowl wanted a piece of the action and every 6-5 team, or so it often seemed, got in on the party.
When the NCAA finally stopped passing out certification like halloween candy, there were 25 bowls last season and more waiting on deck.
Never again would Hawai'i see matchups like the Troy Aikman vs. Emmitt Smith showdown in 1987 that brought non-UH crowds above 30,000.
"The attractions just weren't there anymore," said Les Keiter, Aloha Stadium spokesman.
Where the Aloha Bowl once had its pick of teams after the big boys — the New Year's Day bowls — had sent out invitations, things changed in the early 1990s when conferences began contractually tying up with bowls.
Where the Aloha Bowl might have gotten the second or third-place team from one of the major conferences, when the tie-ups began it was pushed down the food chain and saddled with fourth and fifth-place teams. The problem was exacerbated by the addition of the O'ahu Bowl in 1998 and the resulting doubleheader.
Sometimes, such as last year, the teams came from well down the standings in far-flung leagues such as the Atlantic Coast Conference (Virginia), Big East (Boston College) and Southeastern Conference (Georgia).
Throw in Arizona State, which lost whatever minimal attractiveness it might have had by making back-to-back appearances in 1999 and 2000 with 6-5 records, and the absence of a return by UH, and there was limited marquee value and no local tie to speak of .
TV's push to split the games last year in pursuit of additional ratings, which resulted in selling two days — Christmas Eve and Christmas Day — of games but requiring one $45 ticket, was the final nail. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the games drew less than 25,000 combined.
Along with the hit taken at the box office, the inability to match NCAA-mandated minimums in local ticket sales put the games at risk of losing certification, said Rohlfing, who is still making payments on the $1.7 million purchase from Bowl Games of Hawai'i.'
"Maybe," Keiter said, "the trouble was we had no Yanagisawa around."
Given the changes that have taken place since the Aloha Bowl's debut, even Yanagisawa's entrepreneurial abilities would have been challenged.
