Bruins won’t be bowling in San Jose, Boise games
By Daily Bruin Staff
Dec. 5, 2001 9:00 p.m.
By Hannah Gordon
Daily Bruin Reporter
The Bruin football players will be home for the holidays this
year.
UCLA will not participate in any bowl game, despite finishing
7-4. Â Although UCLA was not formally invited to any bowl, the
university discussed the possibility with the Silicon Valley Bowl
in San Jose, Calif., and the Humanitarian Bowl in Boise, Idaho.
“We never said we weren’t interested in playing in
the game, just unwilling to lose several hundred thousand dollars
to play,” outgoing UCLA athletic director Peter Dalis said in
a statement.
Both bowls require schools to purchase a $350,000 corporate
sponsorship, which Dalis said is not standard. The Humanitarian
Bowl pays each school $750,000 but requires the purchase of 5,000
tickets from each school. Also, each team must spend at least five
nights in Boise.
“When you combine those totals with other costs associated
with a bowl … We projected a loss of about $300,000,” said
Dalis, whose annual athletic department budget is $36 million.
Dalis said the $300,000 would be better spent on the new
athletic training facility project, which will cost in excess of
$10 million.
“That is for the administration to decide,”
cornerbacks coach R. Todd Littlejohn said. “I wish we would
have gone.”
The coaches and players voted last week to accept any bowl
invitation.
There is general disappointment that 11 teams with worse records
than UCLA will be playing in bowl games this season.
“I don’t think there is one senior who feels
satisfied,” senior quarterback Scott McEwan said. “We
were looking forward to another game to redeem
ourselves.”
Instead, Michigan State (6-5) took the at-large bid to play
Fresno State (11-2) in the Silicon Valley Bowl and Clemson (6-5)
was the at-large choice to face Louisiana Tech (7-4) at the
Humanitarian Bowl.
Those schools expect to sell far more than the requisite 5,000
tickets and that fan interest helped sway the bowl committees. In
contrast, many UCLA fans became disenchanted after the team fell
from 6-0 and No. 4 in the BCS rankings to 7-4 and unranked.
With all four losses in Pac-10 games, the Bruins missed out on
an automatic bowl bid by finishing sixth in the conference.
“It shouldn’t have come down to the Humanitarian
Bowl,” Littlejohn said. “We really don’t have
anyone to blame but ourselves.”
