Greg Hansen: Arizona Bowl 'just getting started' in quest to become singularly special

Arizona’s berth in last season’s Foster Farms Bowl was so forgettable that I could not remember if the Wildcats won or lost. I had to look it up. (Purdue 38, Arizona 35).

But I remember the finish to the Nova Home Loans Arizona Bowl so clearly that I can still picture the tears spilling from the eyes of New Mexico State coach Doug Martin.

I remember vendors issuing AGGIES WIN souvenir covers of the Arizona Daily Star to hundreds of fans who rushed the field. I remember parking on the sixth floor of a UA garage — one of the last three or four available spaces — next to scores of cars with New Mexico license plates.

Attendance was 39,132. It felt like 139,132.

I will long contend the Arizona Bowl was the top day in Tucson sports, 2017.

On Wednesday, seven months after the dreamy Arizona Bowl III, the game’s founder, Tucson attorney Ali Farhang, looked me in the eyes and said “we’re only going to get better.”

Farhang was cheered by some of Tucson’s most prominent movers and shakers, notably Jon Volpe, Fletcher McCusker and Mark Irvin, as he made a seismic announcement.

The new executive director of the Arizona Bowl is Kym Adair. She is only the second female executive director of the NCAA’s 39 bowl games, and Farhang expects her to be a game-changer.

And then he added this: the romance that developed the last two seasons between Tucson and thankful-to-be-here bowl combatants New Mexico State and Air Force is an ever-changing dynamic.

“Our contracts with the Mountain West and Sun Belt conference expire in December 2019,” Farhang said. “When the time is right, we are going to have some very exciting news about the future of the Arizona Bowl.”

Farhang has participated in discussions with Power 5 conference schools about replacing the Sun Belt and Mountain West. Or not. Some have speculated that the Las Vegas Bowl matchup — the Mountain West champion versus a Pac-12 school — will migrate to Tucson when Las Vegas’ NFL football stadium opens in 2020.

Each of the 39 bowls will sign a six-year contract for conference affiliations sometime in 2019. Don’t expect the Arizona Bowl to stand pat.

Given the impressive out-of-the-gate performance of the Arizona Bowl, and of Farhang and his 70-member bowl committee, this is not going to be the Foster Farms Bowl, or any of the homogenized middle-tier bowl games that are played for the purpose of TV programming.

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“People keep telling me we have surpassed expectations for a bowl our size — a new bowl — and that we should be satisfied with 40 percent occupancy at the stadium,” said Adair. “I tell them we’re just getting started.”

This is sensitive terrain. Both Adair and Farhang are navigating the future carefully.

Their early success is due, in part, to the genuine glad-to-be-here approach taken by New Mexico State and Air Force, and to a lesser degree Colorado State and Nevada. Plus, Tucsonans last year bought 13,000 tickets and distributed them to teachers, disadvantaged families and to the military.

That’s not a misprint: 13,000.

“Because of the attitude of our teams and of Tucson, our bowl games have been a lot like those from (the ‘60s and ‘70s); it’s not just another game on TV,” said Farhang. “People care. We care. We don’t want to lose that. It’s important to remember who we are. I mean, New Mexico State acted like this was the Super Bowl.”

You don’t get that with a Foster Farms Bowl.

For years, Adair was an executive at Nova Home Loans and began working on a volunteer basis with former Arizona Bowl executive director Alan Young, who retired over the winter.

A mother of two who is married to former Pima College baseball player Craig Adair, Kym recently made a life-changing decision to go from the mortgage business to the bowl business.

Ordinarily, a female in the mostly-male bowl industry would raise eyebrows. But Tucson has a history of excellence in the women-in-sports-business for more than 30 years.

Judy McDermott, executive director of the Tucson Conquistadores, operated one of the world’s 10-leading pro golf tournaments on Dove Mountain. The late Mary Roby and her UA successor, Rocky LaRose, will be remembered as two of the leading NCAA women’s athletic administrators of any era. Sheila Baize was the get-it-done athletic director of the enormous TUSD sports operation for a quarter-century.

Adair, who grew up in Scottsdale, gave up her position at Nova to help guide the Arizona Bowl and its promising future. If she is awed, it doesn’t show.

“It doesn’t matter your shape, size, gender or nationality,” she said. “I was hired to get the job done and done well. That’s my only mission.”

Arizona Bowl IV will kick off at 11:15 a.m. on Dec. 29. That’s a Saturday. In Tucson it might as well be a holiday.