Solving This Is a No. 1 Priority

By BILL PLASCHKE

Dec. 31, 1996 12 AM PT

Got up Monday morning, well rested after nodding off during a Texas bowl game honoring a battle in which 183 Texans and friends were killed.

Watching bowl games this season is like watching family reunion softball games . . . involving someone else’s family. The players are excited, and you don’t have a clue.

The Alamo Bowl featured Texas Tech and Iowa. Didn’t follow them during the regular season. Didn’t check any of their scores. Don’t know anybody who did.

Yet somebody schedules them during the holidays, puts a bowl patch on their jerseys, and expects people to watch them instead of “A Love Boat Christmas.”

Not anymore, people don’t.

Eighteen bowl games, sixteen punch lines.

Got up Monday morning, upset at all this lipstick being applied to all these pigs, and decided to do something about it.

Decided to arrange a national championship game between Arizona State and Florida State.

Arizona State is going to win one legitimate game, the Rose Bowl.

Florida State will win the other legitimate game, the Sugar Bowl.

Want to bring them together on Jan. 19, the open Sunday before the Super Bowl.

This is not a proposal for a playoff system or a weeklong celebration or anything that messy or permanent.

This is one game. One time. There won’t be much notice, but some pretty good World Series have been arranged in 48 hours.

Two unbeatens, playing for the national title that exists in every other college sport but this one.

Why not?

Picked up the phone.

Started with TV, which is where this must start, because a network will have to pick up the tab.

Started with Fox, which has the nerve.

“In theory, you should be able to do it,” admitted Vince Wladika, spokesman for Fox Sports. “And there is one way to get it done. That is called money.”

Now for the stadium. Called Bill Wilson, president of the national Stadium Managers Assn. and manager of San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

He said his place would not be available because renovations were under way to enlarge it.

But he offered this one-word recommendation for other sites.

“Anywhere,” he said. “Are you kidding me? You bet your life that anybody in the country will take this game.”

He said the timing is perfect for any NFL stadium not playing host to the Super Bowl, which means anywhere but New Orleans.

“To do it just before the Super Bowl, when everybody is sick of hearing about the NFL--wow,” he said. “I know I would rearrange every tractor pull and monster truck show to make it happen, and so would anybody else in my business.”

So, that’s done.

Now for the schools.

“I’d be inclined to support it,” said Kevin White, Arizona State athletic director. “But a lot of people at Arizona State would have a bite out of that apple.”

One of his players, tackle and leader Juan Roque, added, “We’d play ‘em, why not?” he said. “Even if you’d put it to a vote of the players, it’d be unanimous to play.”

Florida State wasn’t as thrilled.

“The possibility is nil,” said Dave Hart Jr., Seminole athletic director. “That would not happen.”

But what do you expect? If it and Arizona State both finish unbeaten, Florida State will probably be voted national champion, only because the voting is done by a lot of “experts” who dress like Beano Cook and couldn’t name one state capital west of Birmingham.

So TV is ready. A stadium guru said one of his buddies will have a site. At least one team sounds convinced to participate, and the other could be swayed by public opinion.

Only one last call to make, to that little office somewhere in Kansas, to that group called the National Collegiate Athletic Assn.

Every person called for this column said the NCAA would have to approve. What’s not to approve?

“Well, we have rules,” said Kathryn Reith, a pleasant NCAA spokeswoman.

And?

“This game would violate those rules,” she said.

Such as?

“After the second week in December, teams can only play in one postseason game as approved by the special events committee,” she said.

And why can’t the committee approve this game?

“We have our annual meeting in January in Nashville, and legislation for that meeting had to be submitted last summer,” she said.

But why not bend the rules just once, on Jan. 19, for the good of the sport? Why not some emergency committee meeting?

“It’s not us,” she said. “It’s the member schools [110 Division I-A football schools]. We are a total democracy. They decide. The presidents, or their representatives. “

And if Arizona State and Florida State decide to play anyway?

“If you knowingly violate an NCAA rule, it could be serious,” she said.

As serious as an athlete accepting a gift from a coach (whose program is making millions off this kid’s talent)?

“Yes,” she said.

Oh. Now I understand.