Post-scandal Fiesta Bowl must justify place in BCS (AP)

Wednesday, March 30, 2011 4:01 PM By dwi

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – The Fiesta Bowl ejected its honcho chief amid corruption allegations and today faces a newborn challenge: disenchanting the BCS to let it meet in the profitable structure system used to honor a domestic champion.

If Fiesta Bowl officials can't, BCS honcho director Bill Hancock says the organization has no difficulty booting them.

"We module not do playing with people who do playing like that," Hancock said. "We meet module not be related with this kind of behavior."

Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott added: "We want to send a country and rattling strong communication to the open most the standards and values (that) the conferences that attain up the BCS stand for."

The Fiesta Bowl released an internal inform that uncovered "excessive compensation, nonbusiness and incongruous expenditures and incongruous gifts" and fired longtime CEO and President John Junker.

The BCS has ordered up a duty force to support determine if the body of field college sport want to move doing playing with the Fiesta Bowl. It is in the ordinal assemblage of a four-year care to be part of the BCS.

The BCS is digit of threesome organizations whose polls honor domestic champions, the others existence The Associated Press and ESPN/USA Today.

The reimbursements, traded as at small $46,539, are an apparent ravishment of land campaign direction laws and the charter that allows the Fiesta Bowl its nonprofit status. Arizona land prosecutors are also conducting a probe.

The Fiesta commission unanimously fired Prussian "for his improper and incongruous activities documented" in the report.

"The whole Fiesta Bowl kinsfolk is furious and frustrated by what we've seen in the inform and by the actions of Mr. Junker," commission chair Duane Woods told reporters at the event's duty in downtown Scottsdale.

"The Fiesta Bowl is greater than a some individuals, and the warning here really is that we placed likewise such consortium in a single individual," he added. Woods did not take questions.

Junker, in his ubiquitous bright chromatic Fiesta Bowl sports jacket, had been the face of the mettlesome for threesome decades, directive it from an upstart event to digit of the BCS giants. The others are the Rose, Orange and Sugar bowls.

The Fiesta, which also operates the Insight Bowl and some other small events, staged the highly expected pairing between Auburn and Oregon for the domestic championship this year.

With an annual salary of most $600,000, Prussian had been on paying administrative lead since Feb. 4 after, the commission said, he failed to obey with digit written directives to work with the investigation.

Junker's attorney, Steve Dichter, said via email that his computer did not hit admittance to the inform before it was prefabricated public. He said the writing was existence unnatural before it was observed whether Prussian would hit a interpret on it.

The 276-page inform of an enquiry conducted by Fiesta Bowl commission members and a retired Arizona Supreme Court justice was published on the bowl's Web place fiestabowl.org.

The investigators said they institute the "apparent scheme" to recompense at small $46,539 for employees' semipolitical contributions.

The enquiry also institute "an apparent band to conceal the reimbursement scheme from the bowl's Board of Directors and land officials," according to the programme release concomitant the report.

Woods distinct the timeline that began with a inform in The Arizona Republic in Dec 2009 that five former or underway Fiesta Bowl employees had been reimbursed for semipolitical donations they were encouraged to make.

A brief enquiry by former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods, no relation to the commission chairman, led to the conclusion that there was no plausible evidence to support the allegations.

Now the commission says that inform was "flawed."

Duane Woods said that last September, an employee — identified in the inform as Junker's honcho assistant, buffoon Keough — came to his duty and told him that indeed the reimbursements had been made.

That led to the long enquiry resulting in Tuesday's report.

Among the some expenditures questioned by the inform was the 50th date celebration for Prussian paying for by the Fiesta Bowl at a outlay of $33,0000 at Pebble Beach, Calif., his car allowance. and paying membership in quaternary selected private sport clubs. There also was a $1,200 activate for Prussian and digit others to a Phoenix field club.

Dichter said the commission did not ask Prussian most the date party. He said he had nothing to do with paying for it, that it was finished by another employee at the time. Junker's attorney provided The Associated Press with the transcripts of the now-ousted CEO's interview with the investigators.

The reimbursements go backwards to at small 2002, the inform concluded. The semipolitical donations, mostly to Republican candidates and causes, were not required but strongly suggested, individual employees told the investigators.

According to the report, when the initial enquiry was prefabricated mass The Republic's story, lobbyist Gary Husk helped pass Woods absent from those who had actually been presented reimbursements and prepped others who were interviewed on what to say.

The Husk Brothers lobbying concern was paying $286,000 by the Fiesta Bowl in 2009, according reports filed by the IRS.

The commission declared a program of steps to reform its operations and control transparently to preclude any move of such problems. That includes hiring a honcho financial tar and a generalized counsel/compliance officer.

The structure has threesome years mitt on its four-year BCS contract, but that strength not protect it from the possibility of existence booted soured college football's biggest stage.

Other bowls are hot for a quantity to stop the highly profitable domestic denomination game.

The Cotton Bowl, for example, is played at the Dallas Cowboys' lavish newborn stadium, and structure officials hit never unseeable their desire to return to selected structure status.

Cotton Bowl President Rick Baker declined interpret finished a structure spokesman.

___

http://www.fiestabowl.org/_documents/reports/Press_Release_3-29-2011.pdf


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