Rick Minter's acceptance speech sounded very rehearsed, but he didn't care. The University of Cincinnati football coach was unabashedly thrilled Wednesday that the Bearcats had gained their first bowl bid since 1950.
UC (7-4) was awarded an at-large bid to face Big West champion Utah State (6-5) in the inaugural Sports Humanitarian Bowl in Boise, Idaho on Dec. 29. Game time is 3:30 p.m. on ESPN2.
Going bowling
What: Sports Humanitarian Bowl
When/where: 3:30 p.m. Dec. 29, at Boise, Idaho
Opponent: Big West champion Utah State (6-5, 4-1 league)
Where: Bronco Stadium (30,000), Boise State University
TV: ESPN2
Radio: WLW-AM (700)
Minimum guaranteed each team: $750,000
Seats each team must buy: 5,000 (one-sixth of stadium)
Tickets: $30. (Call UC ticket office, 556-2287)
Preparation: UC will resume practicing today, and will leave for Boise either Dec. 25 or 26.
Noteworthy: UC has gone longer than any Division IA program without a bowl bid.
About Boise
Population: 372,210
Elevation: 2,842 feet.
Average January temperature: 21-36 degrees.
If you go
Airfare (Dec. 26-30): $757 from Cincinnati, $588 from Dayton.
Driving distance: 1,962.
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''The last time UC went to a bowl, rock-and-roll had not been invented yet,'' an exuberant Minter said. ''Elvis was just an infant. Mount Everest had not been conquered.''
Well, Elvis was not an infant, being 15 years old in 1950. But no one was about to nit-pick on Minter's own little Mount Everest party, given the fact that UC has won a bowl bid deemed impossible three weeks ago.
UC's year seemed over when it suffered a season-ending 14-7 loss at East Carolina on Nov. 13. With a 7-4 record, UC faced the fact that the last time a Bearcat team had been this good, an 8-3 record in 1993, the team got nary a sniff of a bowl.
But things have obviously changed. There are a few more bowls now, the Humanitarian being one. UC now has a league, Conference USA, batting for it. And some usual bowl locks, such as Colorado and Alabama, suffered losing seasons.
''Some things opened up for us,'' Minter said, ''but we're not apologizing. This makes UC alums around the U.S. stand proud and stick their chests out.''
Mostly, it was the intense lobbying of UC Athletic Director Bob Goin that was credited with securing the bid. UC made no secret that it would go to the ends of the earth, literally, to end its bowl drought.
''We'd have gone to the North Pole if we had to,'' Minter said. Wednesday, Minter, Goin, and UC President Dr. Joseph Steger accepted the bid in a conference call at Shoemaker Center, before a room full of Cincinnati reporters.
UC captains Phillip Curry, Jason Fabini, John Kobalka, and Derrick Ransom all attended the news conference.
''When we lost our last game, I had a bad feeling about it,'' Fabini said. ''But then Mr. Goin and coach Minter went to work for our program. And some day, people can say about us, 'Those guys ended the 47-year drought.' ''
Some thought UC's relatively small fan base - 20,135 per home game this year - would hurt the Bearcats' bowl bid, since bowls are basically tourism vehicles. UC generally takes only a few hundred fans to road games.
Still, Humanitarian Bowl president Steve Schmader said UC was the unanimous choice of all 13 bowl committee members, once their original top choice, Oregon, opted for the Las Vegas Bowl on Tuesday.
''I can't say enough about how Cincinnati has courted us,'' Schmader said. ''We couldn't be more thrilled.''
Goin, who said UC is appealing to any and all Cincinnatians - ''friends, uncles, aunts, grandmas and grandpas - to consider attending, said UC has ''a business deal to take up to 15,000 tickets.'' That would be a $450,000 outlay, but the Bearcats are required to buy only 5,000 tickets (one-sixth of the stadium) under NCAA and bowl rules.
Goin also sealed a home-and-home men's basketball series between Boise State and UC, which he had offered as a goodwill gesture. Goin did not divulge details, but Schamder confirmed that UC plays in Boise next fall - probably in late December around bowl time - and that Boise will play at UC in the 1999-2000 season.
Goin said the basketball series was not the deal-maker for the football bowl game.
''It's just a nice plum,'' he said. ''This whole thing for us, it's not the Rose Bowl, but it's great exposure for the whole UC program.''
The game will be on ESPN2, which reaches 53.1 million homes, according to ESPN publicist Dave Nagle. College football this year drew an average 0.8 rating on ESPN2, which translates to about 425,000 homes at any time.
''We won't know what this means to recruiting until a few years down the road,'' Minter said. ''But it can only help.''
Bowl game more than football Tim Sullivan column
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