Now That's What I Call A Fiesta!

Fiesta Bowl probe results in Junker dismissal, casts pall over BCS
By Austin Murphy and Michael McKnight, SI.com

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- For 30 years, John Junker was a glad-handing, canary-blazered shogun of the Fiesta Bowl, the smiling face of that event and its most passionate advocate. So grand was his passion that it overruled his judgment, which is how the 55-year-old came to find himself seated at a conference table, trying to convince investigators there was a legitimate business purpose for the $1,241 he'd charged to the bowl for a visit to a high-end Phoenix strip club on September 12, 2008. ("We are in the business where big strong athletes are known to attend these types of establishments," Junker said, according to investigators. "It was important for us to visit and we certainly conducted business.")

That pathetic quote appears on page 240 of the bowl's 276-page, 1,500-footnote "Special Committee Report" -- the result of a recently completed investigation that was launched last fall. That evening of adult entertainment is but one of many instances outlined in the report of brazen, scandalous behavior by Junker and others on the Fiesta Bowl payroll that included, but wasn't limited to: funneling money to politicians through bowl employees; coaching witnesses, and altering documents during the investigation that followed; taking junkets to college football games with politicians and their families -- all on the bowl's dime. On page 210 is a charge that the bowl footed the $33,188 bill for Junker's 50th birthday party, a four-day bacchanal in Pebble Beach that had, according to one attendee, "absolutely no business purpose."

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This story just further illustrates how bad my luck is. Sure, there were some perks during my tenure at the Alamo Bowl but a stripper doing the Batman on my face certainly wasn’t one of them. And I never got any exciting tasks like bribing Rick Perry. I just had to call and beg fast food restaurants for gift certificates. I think I really could have been a valuable asset to the Fiesta Bowl. I basically have no moral code and I’ll work for trips to the strip club.