Think the Quick Lane Bowl is absurd? The Gophers' first bowl game had its oddities, too

There was research done this week to discover why an extreme veteran of Minnesota newspapering can't shake the feeling that a college football world with 39 bowl games, plus a four-team playoff, is the most asinine occurrence through all our decades of puffed-up sports postseasons.

I mean, how could anything get more asinine than this:

The Gophers didn't attain that feeble standard of winning half of their games (including nonconference patsies) to be "bowl eligible," but they are playing in one of these abominations anyway:

Gophers (5-7, 3-6 in Big Ten) vs. Bowling Green (7-5, 5-3 in the Mid-American), Quick Lane Bowl, 1 p.m. Dec. 26, in Detroit. Attendance estimates: Announced — 28,000. Actual — 7,500.

Most every entity in sports inflates attendance. None inflates as outrageously as promoters of third- and fourth-rate bowl games.

Come on, you old grouch, it's a reward for the "kids."

Day after Christmas, against an MAC team, in Detroit, in a game named after an oil change company. Yes, those kids will jump around joyously after winning this one, but know this:

They are faking it.

For sure, you can't sell this nonsense to someone who was a Gopher-loving 15-year-old when Murray Warmath took his 47-player squad to Minnesota's first-ever bowl game.

The Rose Bowl on Jan. 2, 1961, the only bowl game of that era that a Big Ten team was allowed to attend. And when the Gophers getting there meant everything to us.

Back there, we went this week to peruse the Minneapolis newspapers coverage — morning Tribune and afternoon Star — in the first several days after the Gophers arrived at the Burbank airport on Dec. 18, 1960.

As the typist for Sid Hartman's official autobiography ("Sid! The Sports Legends, the Inside Scoops and the Close Personal Friends," 1997), I always had considered his greatest moment to have been in December 1974, when he broke the shocking news that Ara Parseghian — a mere 51 in age — would be quitting as Notre Dame's coach after the Orange Bowl (Irish 13, Alabama 11).

Sid was demeaned for offering such foolishness in the South Bend Tribune, in the Chicago Tribune, in the largest newspapers in the country, but he stood firm, knowing he had an impeccable source:

Dan Devine, the coach who had privately agreed to leave the Green Bay Packers. Not named in the original scoop, but familiar to Sid going back to Devine's postwar time as the quarterback at Minnesota Duluth.

And here comes the but: That was not the greatest moment of Sid's career. It had to be those first days when the 1960 Gophers had arrived in Pasadena, Calif., to fulfill the dream of playing in a Rose Bowl.

How big was that in our world? In 1960, Minnesota was awarded an NFL expansion franchise for the 1961 season in January; the Minneapolis Lakers announced the move to Los Angeles in April; and on Oct. 26, the American League announced the Washington Senators would be moving here.

And when the local Associated Press bureau, serving newspapers across the state, took votes in late December on Minnesota's Sports Story of the Year, it was a slam dunk:

"Gophers Gridders voted National Champions and reach the Rose Bowl."

And what you learned, from reading Sid, starting with the arrival at the Burbank airport on Dec. 18, included the following:

* The "L.A. Writers," largely seen as spies for Pacific Coast champion Washington, would be allowed to watch the Gophers' practices through Dec. 22, then would be shut out by our always-wary coach Warmath.

* The Gophers would visit a show hosted by Dinah Shore and would get a personal meet-and-greet with comedian George Gobel, thanks to George's friendship with Sid Freeman from Northfield, Minn.

* Esteemed line coach Bob Bossons could be interested in the Georgia Tech job because his young daughter had asthma.

* Joe Salem and Frank Brixius, a couple of true Gophers characters, arranged to ride in one of the cars from the airport to the Huntington Hotel with Carole Washburn, the Rose Bowl queen.

* Bing Crosby met the Gophers at a "TV spectacular" and told them he was betting on Washington and taking the 6 ½ points. Brixius said, "That's OK; you can afford to lose it," drawing a laugh from Bing.

* Drum majorette Diane Seely, 15, with the high school band greeting the Gophers at the airport, was told by her Scandinavian mother to invite "a Minnesota Swede" to Christmas dinner. She chose lineman Greg Larson.

* The Gophers and the Huskies visited Disneyland, the new, dazzling $33 million adventure park in distant Orange County, and each player was given five free ride tickets.

— Tony Schoenhoff, a former Minneapolis Tribune employee, was now an L.A. songwriter working under the name Tony Sinclair. He had released a song, "Gopher Rose Bowler," played by Eddie Dunstedter, who used to play the organ at a Twin Cities theater.

On it went — the most fabulous collection of tidbits and Minnesota connections that one whirling dervish of a newspaperman, Mr. Hartman, then 40 and with 60 ½ years remaining in his career, could muster in the sun of Southern California.

Yeah, Bing was right, Washington in a 17-7 upset, but the Gophers went back out the next year and whupped UCLA, 21-3.

Great revenge, but never the equal in anticipation of the first one, although in a rare Sid failing, there was never a follow-up as to whether Larson made it to dinner at the Seelys.