CRONK LEAVING A ROSE-Y LEGACY BOWL'S DYNAMIC FOOTBALL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN SET TO RETIRE.

Byline: Gabe Lacques Staff Writer

PASADENA - Harriman Cronk could impress a visitor with any number of photos hanging on his office walls.

There's Cronk mugging with President Reagan, circa 1987. There's Cronk with Gregory Peck at the 1988 Rose Parade. There's Cronk hoisting one of his two grandchildren, barely bigger than the palm of his hand. And there's a photo from the 1995 Rose Bowl, signed by participating coaches Joe Paterno and Rich Brooks.

But Cronk, the Rose Bowl's football committee chairman, ignores those opportunities to brag and points to a picture of a group of men gathered around a table. There's Cronk, along with former football committee chairmen Lay Leishman and Stan Hahn.

``Seventy years of football committee chairmen in one room,'' Cronk muses. ``I try to follow in their footsteps.''

Most people say he did so successfully. Cronk is retiring from his position after the Jan. 3 game, but the impact he has had will be felt for some time.

Cronk, 69, was named the Rose Bowl Game's football committee chairman in 1989. What followed were 12 years of high-stakes negotiations and controversy as Cronk and others battled to keep the Rose Bowl viable while maintaining a tradition dating back to 1902.

The Jan. 3 game, when Miami and Nebraska play for the Bowl Championship Series' national championship, culminates an evolution that rankled some traditionalists and mystified fans who wonder what computer rankings have to do with deciding a national champion.

The Rose Bowl - the stadium, the game, the tradition - looks considerably different than it did in 1989. So, for that matter, does college football.

Much of it can be traced to Cronk.

See that expanded press box lining the west side of the stadium? That came under Cronk's watch as chair of the Rose Bowl Management Committee.

Then there's the very creation of the BCS, which has been an almost nonstop controversy for a sport that was supposed to have none once the Big Ten and Pacific-10 conferences joined the other four major leagues to produce a consensus national championship.

The BCS was formed at a 1998 meeting in Dallas. Cronk, Pac-10 and Big Ten commissioners Tom Hansen and Jim Delany, Southeastern Conference commissioner Roy Kramer and then-Tournament of Roses CEO Jack French hammered out a monumental agreement. In it, the six major conferences agreed to send the top two teams in the country to a national-championship game.

The Rose Bowl gets the game this season, and that means for the first time it will kick off at dusk, two days after the Rose Parade.

ABC will televise every BCS championship game until 2006 and will pay out handsome sums of money to every school that qualifies for either the Rose, Sugar, Orange or Fiesta bowls.

Those juicy payoffs also can be traced to Cronk, who spends his mornings as a senior investment officer at a Pasadena brokerage firm and his spare time reshaping the face of college football.

In his paid job and his volunteer work, he's helped make a lot of people a lot of money.

When Cronk became football committee chairman in 1989, the Rose Bowl was the broadcast property of NBC, which paid it approximately $11 million to televise the game. But Cronk's chance meeting with ABC Sports president Dennis Swanson at a preseason Big Ten luncheon in 1987 sparked what proved to be a lucrative relationship with that network.

When NBC wanted to reduce its payout to the Rose Bowl, Cronk turned to ABC, which trumped NBC's bid and gained rights to the game. But the big payoff came later, when Cronk helped negotiate three extensions of the contract.

In 2006, the final year of the current contract, the participating teams will split $27 million from ABC.

Cronk also ensured the Rose Bowl would enjoy a ``most-favored nation'' status with ABC, so that no bowl would pay more than Pasadena's.

``He was very helpful in leveraging that up to the level we were able to achieve, which was quite good considering we had existing contracts that limited what we could do in the marketplace,'' said Hansen, the Pac-10 commissioner, who said Cronk ``very much so'' was instrumental in filling the coffers of his conference's schools.

Cronk had a greater obligation than the bottom line, however. He needed to keep the Rose Bowl relevant in a sporting marketplace that thirsted for a playoff, which could render the venerable game obsolete.

What's more, he had to balance progress against the sentimental pull of tradition. Since 1947, the game matched the winners of the Big Ten and Pac-10.

But after undefeated Washington (1991) and Penn State (1994) were denied chances at an undisputed national title because they were contractually bound to the Rose Bowl, the grumbling began.

``If I had to give one person some credit, it would be Paterno when (Penn State) was here,'' Cronk said. ``He was fussing. From that moment on, you began to hear from the commissioners to take what was then the (Bowl) Alliance, move it forward and get a one vs. two.''

The final straw came in 1997, when Michigan finished unbeaten but was tied to the Rose Bowl, so it could not face also-unbeaten Nebraska. The teams split the national title, the final bit of motivation needed to create the BCS.

When the game's power brokers convened for that meeting in Dallas, Cronk's aim was to get the Pac-10 and Big Ten into the national-title mix without sacrificing their spots in the Rose Bowl.

What emerged was a compromise of sorts. The Big Ten and Pac-10 would vacate the Rose Bowl if either conference had a team finish in the BCS top two. And the Rose Bowl would host the national-championship game at the end of the four-year cycle, regardless of who qualified.

``He was the leader of our contingency,'' said French, the TofR's CEO from 1981-2000. ``That was one of the most exciting things we ever did. Exciting, because we were creating history in a way. It was controversial; we had to make it work for everybody. Not everybody likes the BCS, but we were able to take a step forward to determine the national champion without a playoff.''

Adds Cronk: ``It was the form of an evolution, a logical progression. What I feel good about is we maintained the integrity of the Big Ten and Pac-10. I think we came as close as we could to giving the public a 1-2 game without destroying the bowl structure and complying with the presidents' wishes that there be no playoff.''

His tenure could be looked at as one long tightrope walk, whether it was fighting to keep the game devoid of a title sponsor (AT&T eventually signed on as a presenting sponsor) or avoiding the barbs of the media and public that see the BCS as a sham.

``It doesn't bother me,'' Cronk said. ``You can't have a perfect plateau in the football scenario. But you can carry it further.''

So he leaves having helped alter the landscape of the game. But he maintains he fulfilled the wishes of his predecessors, Hahn and Leishman.

``Lay taught me the right way,'' Cronk said of the man known as Mr. Pasadena. ``He would always call me and tell me schools and conferences are the first priority. Always do right by them. I think I did all right.''

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Photo:

As its football committee chairman, Harriman Cronk and others fought to keep the Rose Bowl viable while maintaining a tradition.

Raul Roa/Staff Photographer