BCS gets Fiesta’s plans for reform

Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS

To Bowl Championship Series officials, the Fiesta Bowl appears “dead serious” about reform. And the BCS is “miles away” from considering whether to replace the Arizona game with another bowl.

“The Fiesta Bowl issue happened, and yes, it was disturbing,” BCS executive director Bill Hancock said Wednesday. “But people in Phoenix are as disturbed as we are and ... they want to do something about it.”

The BCS commissioners are holding annual meetings in New Orleans, where next season’s national championship game will be held. Fiesta Bowl officials were invited to rehash highlights of a presentation they made to a BCS task force at the Big Ten offices outside Chicago last weekend that focused on how they have responded to a recent scandal involving the bowl game’s spending practices and political dealings.

“The Fiesta Bowl people were forthright,” Hancock said. “It was a very good exchange, mirroring what happened in Chicago.”

Fiesta Bowl officials, who also run the Insight Bowl, were scheduled to meet today with the NCAA’s Postseason Bowl Licensing Subcommittee.

The subcommittee has said it will delay its decision on licensing the Fiesta and Insight bowls until it can gather more information and review the findings of the BCS task force that is examining related financial and political improprieties.

In March, an internal investigation by a three-member panel made up of two Fiesta Bowl board members and a retired Arizona Supreme Court justice uncovered widespread lavish spending, including $33,188 for a Pebble Beach, Calif., birthday bash for CEO and president John Junker, $13,000 for the wedding and honeymoon of an aide, and a $1,200 strip club tab.