Sport: Gold Bowl

The West has its Rose Bowl, the South its Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Sun Bowl (all played on New Year’s Day). Last week Alaska jumped into the bowl business, 38 days early. Juneau citizens staged a Gold Bowl game between the Alaska Sourdoughs and the Baranof Bears, partly for charity, partly to encourage football among Alaskans.

After the Governor’s daughter, Helen Troy Bender, whacked a bottle of champagne on one of the goal posts, 500 bewildered natives, most of whom had never seen a football game except in the newsreels, watched the Sourdoughs beat the Baranofs, 6-to-0. The Gold Bowl was a cinder-strewn field, frozen sandpaper-rough. But nobody bled much. The players, onetime U. S. college footballers living in Alaska, were dressed in uniforms donated by the University of Washington.

Last time Alaskans saw an organized football game was in 1916.