Sport: Bowls of New Year Cheer

ONE hundred rich years of college football came to a magnificent climax last week with the perfection of an art form: Theater in the Bowls (a quartet of four-act plays). The production may have seemed overlong (nine straight hours on the tube), but for millions of TV fans it was worth it. Each offering was tightly directed, skillfully acted. From Pasadena to Miami a common script of unrelenting suspense was followed with fidelity. When the dust (or, in some cases, mud) had finally settled, three of the four major bowl games had ended in upsets. The action in the arenas was so superlative that New Year’s Day 1970 rose far above the level of traditional Jan. 1 battles between conference champions.