Bruins Interested in Arizona Game Too

UCLA’s expected Cotton Bowl bid has been held up while the bowl alliance hedges its bets against an Arizona upset of Arizona State.

A Sun Devil win puts them in the Fiesta Bowl, but Pacific 10 Conference Commissioner Tom Hansen is lobbying hard to get UCLA in the game if Arizona State loses to its archrival.

“The bowl alliance has not released us,” Pete Dalis, UCLA’s athletic director, said Monday, maintaining that he was still of the belief the Bruins would play Kansas State in the Cotton Bowl on New Year’s Day.

The Pacific 10’s stake in the process is a big one. A Pac-10 team in the Fiesta, a bowl alliance game, gains the conference $8.47 million, which after expenses comes out to about $750,000 per school. Should neither Arizona State nor UCLA go to an alliance game, that money goes elsewhere.