The Cal Bears are a bad-luck -- some might say just plain bad -- team, and have been for a long time. They haven't been to the Rose Bowl since Lassie and her pal Timmy were stars on that wacky new invention, television.
Their opponent was Northwestern. That'll give you some idea about how long it's been.
In fact, the last time they went to any bowl, it was the Garden State Bowl. If the Rose Bowl is the granddaddy of bowls, the Garden State Bowl was sort of the old lecherous uncle. It went belly-up about four years later.
Now Cal's back in bowl competition, and it's another new bowl -- the Copper Bowl. And the Copper Bowl is played in Tucson, Arizona.
You know -- Arizona, land of Savings and Loan scandals, impeached governors, and blistering heat. The state with no official Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.
In the state's general election earlier this month, Arizona voters turned down a proposition that would have created a state holiday for Dr. King. It's one of just a few states that doesn't have a Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.
As soon as the votes were counted, an uproar began. NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue announced that the NFL will move the 1993 Super Bowl out of the state. The primary Arizona bowl game, the Fiesta Bowl, found that the major colleges it was courting suddenly accepted other bowl bids.
And then there's the Copper Bowl. You've got to figure that Cal, having a surprisingly good season (the Bears finished 6-4-1), didn't want to blow a rare chance at postseason play. So it took the Copper Bowl bid, in the midst of all this controversy.
As is often the case in Berkeley, protest erupted. Last Wednesday, demonstrators picketed outside UCB's University Hall with signs reading "Say No to the Copper Bowl," "Don't Compromise Our Freedom," and "Keep the Dream Alive -- Say No."
Students attacked UCB Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien's decision to accept the bowl bid, and accused him of using the fact that there are African-American students on the team to justify his decision.
Tien let the team decide if it wanted to go to the Copper Bowl or not. The team, including the African-American players, voted unanimously to attend the bowl.
Why the controversy in the first place?
It's sad that Arizona voters chose not to vote for a King holiday -- but chances are that the King holiday initiative probably was more a victim of an anti-spending backlash than Arizona racism. Voters in Arizona just didn't want to spend money on another paid holiday for state workers. The King holiday proposition suffered as a result.
In addition, why is it a football boycott?
Has football suddenly become the bastion of Civil Rights? Doubtful. Though Tagliabue had advised that the Super Bowl be pulled out of Arizona, his league's record when it comes to minority hirings is disgusting. NFL hirings far trail the minority hiring records of the NBA and Major League Baseball. I'm sure Raiders head coach Art Shell, as the NFL's only black head coach, is applauding the decision. But the fact that Shell is the only black head coach makes me sick.
The Cal football team chose to go to the Copper Bowl. It is not the fault of the Copper Bowl's organizers that Arizona failed to vote for the holiday -- in fact, Copper Bowl and Fiesta Bowl officials pushed hard for the holiday.
Why should the players and fans of the Cal Bears be punished? Why should the Copper Bowl (and Fiesta Bowl) be punished? Because there's no state holiday for King in Arizona?
The problem demonstrators should be worried about is not the presence or absence of a holiday. The Arizona referendum was not a vote on racism at all -- in all likelihood, it was a vote on government spending. The true problem we all need to be concerned about is racism.
It's our business as human beings to fight racism in every way possible. By focusing on something as stupid as Arizona's referendum, both college and professional football are obscuring the larger point. Boycotting Arizona sporting events is a rash decision that would do little or nothing to stop racism.
Those who protested Cal's Copper Bowl bid should spend their time focusing on matters that actually have something to do with racism. Their energy is welcome, but paid state holidays are not going to stop prejudice.
Individuals like Tagliabue, who try to use a boycott of Arizona as an easy way to show support for Civil Rights, are just trying to fool all of us.
Pulling the Super Bowl out of Arizona and boycotting the Fiesta Bowl and the Copper Bowl won't stop racism -- but it provides the image that something's being done to stop racism.
Image isn't everything. We shouldn't let ourselves be fooled into thinking that by boycotting Arizona, we've done our duty in the fight against racism.
That's a delusion, and one that shouldn't be encouraged.
Oh, and one last thing -- good luck, Cal Bears players and fans.
It looks like you'll need it.