Purple Mafia Profiles: Andrew Bagnato

By Philip Rossman-Reich on December 3, 2011

Today is a pretty busy day. We have the Big Ten Championship Game (and the accompanying live chat right here at 8 p.m.!), we have preparing for Northwestern’s big basketball battle with No. 7/8 Baylor on Sunday and, of course, we have the bowl announcement coming Sunday. The Wildcats could end up anywhere from Houston to Detroit to San Francisco to just about anywhere.

Seemed like a good time to catch up with an influential Northwestern alumnus. So our friend, Brett Kurland caught up with Northwestern alumnus and Chief of Communications for the Fiesta Bowl and Insight Bowl, Andrew Bagnato, to help us decipher the bowl picture just a little bit. Take it away, Brett…

It’s bowl announcement eve, and with Northwestern fans pondering the Wildcats’ bowl fate, we thought this would be a good time to catch up with the Chief of Communications for the Fiesta Bowl and Insight Bowl, Andrew Bagnato, Northwestern Class of 1985.  (For those of you who know your Northwestern football timeline, you’ll realize that means Bagnato was on campus for the back end of the infamous 34-game losing streak.)  Andrew had previously spent many years on the college football beat, working as the national college football writer for the Chicago Tribune.  So, this is a guy knows his pigskin.

Lake The Posts talked to Andrew about a number of things as he draws back the curtain on the bowl selection process, shares what it’s been like working at the Fiesta Bowl as the organization was rocked by scandal (he came on board after all of the alleged improprieties took place), and reflects on his role in LTP’s namesake activity.

The questions and answers below are just a few of the topics we discussed.  The complete interview, which includes Andrew addressing some of the most frequent criticisms of the BCS, his thoughts on the “Persa Strong” Heisman campaign, and the one explosive change he’s seen come to college football, will be available in Lake The Posts’ inaugural podcast (note: the download may not work if you are using Google Chrome as your Web browser).

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BK: You were the national college football writer for the Chicago Tribune while Pat Fitzgerald was winning two National Defensive Player of the Year awards and leading the Wildcats to the Rose Bowl and Citrus Bowl.  Talk about the job Fitz has done over these last several years as the team’s head coach.

AB: I’ve met him on several occasions.  Very impressed.  I think any Northwestern alum would be proud to have him leading the program.  He’s somebody who obviously was there at the start of all of this as a football player, and really a great football player.  But someone who really also understands the mission of Northwestern, which I think does matter. As an alum, I really think it’s important for every facet of the university to really embrace what Northwestern is all about, whether it’s athletics, or the economics department, or the journalism school.  And he lives the ideal.  He lives it and believes in it.

I think you can make an argument that Northwestern took a chance on Fitz when he was a player, because he was probably undersized for his position.  I remember that he was trying to walk on at other places.  I think he was a guy that Northwestern gave him a chance.  He embraced it, made the best of it.  Isn’t that what we want from pretty much anybody who goes to school there?  And I just think to have someone like that… He’s walked the walk.  When he tells players, he stresses academics and work ethic and all that sort of stuff, he’s actually done it himself.

I just feel like the program is in a really great place.  They’ve done some interesting things marketing-wise around him.  We’ve seen the way they’ve used him as an asset for the program, to promote it.  And that’s a tough market to promote in because it’s so pro sports centric.  So he’s really an invaluable asset to them.

BK: Looking at Northwestern’s bowl prospects… I know that it looks like they are not coming to either of your games this year, but what is the appeal of Northwestern for a bowl?  How would you evaluate the Wildcats as a bowl candidate?

AB: I remember from the Rose Bowl, part of the appeal was Cindy Crawford showing up at Disneyland with the team, having attended Northwestern herself. (laughs)

I think it’s a fan base that, while it’s relatively small compared to the people it competes against, is relatively affluent.  Also, it’s a very powerful fan base in the sense that a lot of their alums are people who you want coming to visit your community because maybe they’ll move their companies here.

And I think, and we see this with Stanford now, I think there’s a lot of people out there who kind of root for schools like Northwestern and Stanford.  They might not have anything to do with them in any way, but I think they like to think that these schools are special academically, maybe and somehow that can translate to people wanting that team to do well.  Maybe that’s not true at all, but I have that sense.

Also, with Northwestern, let’s face it, they haven’t had a lot of bowl history.  So I don’t think Northwestern fans are real tired of going anywhere.  They’ve supported that team really well.  We kind of had them on the Insight Bowl radar last year, in mid-season, and I was getting a lot of questions around the office about “What do you think Northwestern would do?  Would they turn out?  Would they be excited to come here?” And I said, “I think they’d be very excited to come here.  We have a strong alumni association in the Phoenix area, and I think there’d be a lot of people who’d like to get out of Chicago for a few days in the winter time.”

So I think the perception of the bowls, not speaking for anybody else, but I know for us, we see them as a really attractive team.

BK: There’s a lot of chatter that goes on about the bowls and bowl selection.  What do you feel is the biggest misconception about the bowl selection process?

AB: I think the biggest misconception is that all the bowls care about is selling tickets and filling hotel rooms.

We have a luxury here in Phoenix that we have a wonderful destination, so we have a lot to sell.  We can assume that most teams if they are invited to our games are going to want to come to our games because of where it is, and hopefully because of the kind of games that we put on.  So, maybe I’m speaking from a position of advantage there.  But I think that is a misconception that bowl matchups are solely driven by how many tickets are they gonna sell, how many eyes are going to be glued to the television.  I think there are a number of bowls that are also interested in the matchup itself.  “Is this matchup that we’re putting together one that’s interesting?  Is it one that’ll set us apart in some way?” Those things, a lot of times, don’t have anything to do with tickets or hotel rooms.

Economics are a factor for everyone, but there are some other things that go on in those discussions that are going on right now.  I think one thing people don’t realize is “how often has a team been in your bowl?”  We’ve had numerous teams that have been in a market three/four times in a five year period.  They may be a great program, but maybe they don’t want to come back and maybe it’s better for the bowl if they took somebody else that year.  So even though they might be a great program, you might say, “Is there a different way to do it?”

There’s just a lot of different factors that go into the decisions.

BK: What’s your favorite Northwestern football memory?

AB: Well, since this is for Lake The Posts… I believe Minnesota was the game that Northwestern won to break the conference losing streak, if I’m not mistaken, midseason 1982, my sophomore year.  I believe this was also the game that we tore down the goal posts, “we” being a lot of people.  I remember them carrying the goal posts up the south stands and dropping them onto Central Avenue.  A bunch of people went around the other side, took the goal posts down Central, stopped in front of the president’s house (I don’t remember what was said), and then marched them down to the beach, and threw them in the lake.  I remember getting into the water, and feeling like, “it’s getting a little deep,” and kind of looking back and there weren’t as many people now carrying the goal post, because it was a pretty chilly day.  The funny thing was, I didn’t go to really all that many Northwestern football games as a student and that was one that I did and I remember being a part of that whole bunch.  I hope I have the right game, but I think that was the game that that happened. [Ed. Note: Northwestern did in fact break their 38-game Big Ten losing streak against Minnesota, on October 18, 1982.  And goalposts were indeed deposited in Lake Michigan after that victory. (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1126020/index.htm).]

And then the other memory I have is covering the [1996 Rose Bowl] in Pasadena, there was a moment a couple of hours before the game up in the press box that somebody said “OK, in the back of the press box, we’re going to get all of the Northwestern alums together for a team photo.”  We could barely fit everyone in the entryway to the Rose Bowl press box.  That was a really neat moment too.

Check back later today for the complete podcast of this interview.  Also, you can follow Andrew Bagnato on Twitter @andrewbagnato.