ORANGE BOWL'S HISTORY PEELED.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH

MIAMI - A mangy rooster strutting around some brush on the outskirts of the Orange Bowl easily made it through the iron bars of the NW1 gate, ignoring the chains and padlock meant to keep everyone outside.

Across the way at the southeast entrance, a group of Miami fire and rescue workers played a game of touch football as tropical raindrops started to fall.

And a couple of guys with Iowa sweatshirts stopped by the main gate to take each other's picture with the stadium's art deco pink-and-green facade in the background.

Otherwise, on the day the Orange Bowl was to be played, the Orange Bowl was just another forgotten relic.

It's been nine years since the Orange Bowl Committee's advisory council voted to disregard tradition, claiming it was pressured by the Bowl Alliance to move the annual college football game from the antiquated landmark to the modern Joe Robbie Stadium - now called Pro Player Stadium - or lose its place in the Bowl Championship Series' national-title game rotation to Jacksonville's Gator Bowl.

Yet plenty of out-of-towners here for Thursday's USC-Iowa matchup couldn't be blamed if there was some confusion about where to park their rental cars and find their seats.

``You'd be amazed how many calls we get every day from people asking about tickets to the game,'' Orange Bowl stadium manager Ileana Gomez said. ``A lot of people visiting think the game is still here.''

Duh. So why isn't it?

``Honestly, I don't know the reason,'' Gomez replied in a somewhat sarcastic tone. ``I only know what I think. It's out of my league, above my head. You'd have to ask the committee. They'd better have a good answer on that.''

Reluctant to talk about it on the record, the OBC people definitely have their reasons.

Some claim the NCAA made them do it because the University of Miami had an unfair home-field advantage for too many years.

Not really.

Despite the fact each stadium has virtually the same 74,000-seat capacity, it's all about the extra income generated from corporate boxes at the newer Pro Player Stadium.

The facility, seven miles north of the Orange Bowl up Interstate 95 off the Florida Turnpike, was erected by then-Miami Dolphins owner Joe Robbie in 1987 for $155 million. He says he had to do it because in the late '70s and early '80s, he couldn't get city voters to approve tax hikes that would fund renovations to the Orange Bowl, where his team had played since its inception.

Thus, seven of the past eight Orange Bowl games have not been played at the Orange Bowl stadium. It went back once, in 1999, because of a conflict with a scheduled Dolphins game.

The horseshoe-shaped Orange Bowl, which opened in 1937 with 22,000 seats before expanding to as many as 80,000 for the 1996 Olympic soccer competition, tried its darnedest to show it was up to the task of putting on a top-notch game. After fixing up the press facilities, it set up portable luxury boxes - basically, a double-wide trailer with big windows in the open east end zone.

Apparently, no one was buying it.

Thus, a facility good enough to be the home field for the reigning national-champion Miami Hurricanes - it has been for 67 years and is under contract to be through 2010 - stands as just another chunk of concrete cast aside by a city that should be embarrassed by this so-called act of progress.

That's not to say the old dame isn't showing some age. It could use a nip and tuck in the right places. So, too, could the area known as Little Havana, which borders the stadium and looks a lot like the South Central neighborhoods around the Coliseum and USC campus.

Comparisons to the Orange Bowl's plight and what could happen to the Rose Bowl aren't a stretch. Both places, good enough at one time to play host to five Super Bowls, have tried to keep up with the times by undergoing multimillion-dollar renovations.

UCLA's contract with the Rose Bowl runs out at end of the 2003 season. The Bruins don't have many options at the moment, but imagine an NFL-built stadium downtown just waiting to lure both them and the annual Pasadena bowl game.

``I don't want the Rose Bowl to become the Orange Bowl,'' Pasadena Councilman Victor Gordo said recently when asked about what needs to be done to keep the stadium from becoming another empty landmark.

A few months ago, Gomez said the Orange Bowl stadium would try to sell naming rights, hoping to generate more money for modernization. Then again, this year's Orange Bowl parade was canceled because of the lack of a corporate sponsor.

Gomez claims the stadium lost about $300,000 in revenue by not having Thursday's game. But it goes deeper than that.

``The soul of Miami has been sold down the river,'' city manager Cesar Odio told the Miami Herald after an emotional meeting in 1994, when the Orange Bowl Committee officially voted to move the game from the stadium that bears its name.

``My father was one of the founders of the Orange Bowl Committee, and he's probably kicking up his coffin right now,'' former OBC president Bill Ward added. ``I hope the bitterness by those who don't understand the complexities of this issue is minimal.''

Almost a decade later, bitterness doesn't seem to be the prevailing emotion here. Looking around this site on game day, it's just a lot of emptyness.