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40 years ago, local business and civic leaders worked together to grab a coveted spot on the national college football stage. It's a business story that has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in dividends to the local economy.
A college football bowl game for San Diego? Jack Murphy, the late San Diego Union sports columnist for whom the Stadium was once named, floated the idea in a June 1977 column: "There will be 15,000 empty hotel rooms here in December. A bowl game would do great things for our industry."
Earlier that year the seed was planted when it was announced that Arizona State University and the University of Arizona would bolt the Western Athletic Conference for the greener pastures of the Pacific Eight Conference, expanding it to the present-day Pac-10. Soon to follow was the admission of San Diego State University to the temporarily short-changed WAC.
Ken Karr, SDSU director of athletics at the time, approached the Greater San Diego Sports Association with a concept. With the Arizona schools leaving the WAC, the Fiesta Bowl, played in Tempe's Sun Devil Stadium, made known its intention to sever its agreement that had provided a host team bowl berth for the conference's champion.
Would or could GSDSA provide a "home" for the WAC champ? In a quality bowl game? At San Diego Stadium?
Charles "Red" Scott, the presiding president of GSDSA, was skeptical. He and his Association colleagues were keenly aware of the numerous well-meaning, but shortlived, attempts to launch sustainable, successful bowl enterprises In San Diego.
GSDSA had, however, established a reputation of"getting things done" on the San Diego sports scene. They had led the efforts to build a multipurpose stadium in Mission Valley that would accommodate the San Diego Chargers, San Diego Padres and San Diego State Aztecs.
After the successes of the sixties, GSDSA board member Steve Horrell remembers the prevailing attitude of the association in the mid-seventies. "We really wanted to be little more than an influence group. Going from that to running an event like a bowl game was a huge transition. About 16 or 18 of our 30-man board decided we should be doing more than monthly luncheons and an annual banquet. They were the ones who got...