Tar Heels invited to bowl in Las Vegas

Steve Guiremand

Tuesday, Dec. 1, 1998 | 10:29 a.m.

If you had predicted back in August that the North Carolina Tar Heels would be playing in the Las Vegas Bowl this year, you would probably have gotten a lot of strange looks from college football fans.

That's because the Tar Heels were ranked No. 10 in the preseason by Lindy's College Football magazine and were considered a strong threat to unseat Florida State as ACC champion and maybe earn a spot in the Bowl Championship Series.

But North Carolina (6-5), which had to overcome an injury-plagued 0-3 start and barely became bowl eligible last Saturday with an exciting 37-34 overtime win over North Carolina State, will indeed be in Las Vegas on Dec. 19th to face San Diego State (7-4) in Las Vegas Bowl VII at Sam Boyd Stadium.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority announced Monday night that the Tar Heels, who also were being courted by the Aloha Bowl, had accepted an at-large invitation to play Ted Tollner's Aztecs.

"To get an ACC team like North Carolina at this time is about as good as it can get," Las Vegas Bowl selection committee member Rob Dondero said. "It's very important to have a team with a good national reputation in the game."

The Tar Heels got the nod over Mississippi (7-4), Miami of Ohio (10-1), Utah (7-4) and Wyoming (8-3).

"Actually, it was pretty obvious to most committee members that they should be invited," said Don Logan, another member of the selection committee. "The national prominence of their league and the number of star players they have made them very appealing."

North Carolina has two of the nation's top quarterbacks in senior Oscar Davenport, who was sidelined part of the season with an injury, and freshman Ronald Curry, USA Today's national high school player of the year in 1997.

The Tar Heels also have one of the nation's top defensive backs in junior Dre' Bly, who should become the school's first three-time consensus All-American and could be a first-round NFL draft choice if he elects to bypass his senior year.

"I think they'll travel well," Dondero said. "We've already been getting lots of phone calls about tickets since the news got out. And after the announcement, San Diego State requested 2,000 more tickets to sell."

Until the Tar Heels became eligible over the weekend, it appeared that the Las Vegas Bowl might be stuck with an all-WAC matchup with either Utah or Wyoming facing San Diego State.

"Everyone on the committee thought it would be hard to sell another WAC game two weeks after the WAC Championship game here," Logan said. "We would have had to wait a few more days for Mississippi and we couldn't afford to wait any longer. Miami of Ohio probably came in second. Everybody liked their 10-1 record."

Each school is required to purchase 8,500 seats for the contest. Both teams will receive a payout of $800,000 for the game, which will be televised nationally by ESPN2 at 3 p.m.

Tickets for the game still are available at $10, $30, $45, $75 and $125 and can be reserved by calling Ticketmaster at 474-4000 or the Thomas & Mack box office at 895-3900.