FOOTBALL; College bowl swap proposed
Oklahoma's football team has begun to think of Miami as a home away from home , having played in four of the last five Orange Bowl games there. Alabama, meanwhile, has enjoyed the same sort of affinity with New Orleans, where it has appeared in four Sugar Bowls during the past five years. Now there's talk of preventing this sort of situation from continuing.
What it boils down to, says Elmore (Scoop) Hudgins, a spokesman for the Southeastern Conference, is that "the schools don't want to go to the same bowl every year." Presently the Southeastern Conference champion gains an automatic berth to the Sugar Bowl and the Big Eight winner plays in the Orange Bowl. But the parties involved are discussing the possibility of having the conference champions swap bowls every other year, perhaps beginning on an experimental basis in 1983.
At one time, consideration was given to making a three- way swap by including the Cotton Bowl, which hosts the Southwest Conference champion. The idea was dropped because Houston has begun to break up the stranglehold Texas once held on league honors.
Before any swapping happens, the Sugar Bowl would have to increase its payoffs to the participating teams to closer approximate the larger amount ($1.3 million) the Orange Bowl pays each team.