Photo by Michael Donahue <\/p>\n
Steve Ehrhart, director of the AutoZone Liberty Bowl, says planning the game is a \"year-round endeavor.\" <\/p>\n
By late morning on Christmas Eve, the AutoZone Liberty Bowl offices in East Memphis were a hub of activity. Steve Ehrhart, the bowl's director for almost two decades now, sat in a chair behind a desk so filled with papers and file folders that it was hard to see the color of the surface. The desk phone rang every few minutes. <\/p>\n
This shouldn't be surprising. After all, the one football game that is the culmination of his year was only seven days and a few hours away. <\/p>\n
What still surprises Ehrhart, though, are friends who will tease him in the coming months about how he has nothing at all to do. <\/p>\n
\"It's a year-round endeavor and it starts next week when we have some meetings with some other bowls down at the BCS Championship Game,\" he said, referring to the bowls' get-together in Miami. \"So people say, 'Well, you're going to take some time off?' \" <\/p>\n
At that, he laughs. <\/p>\n
But this year's \"offseason\" is more important than most. In the coming months, the Liberty Bowl will try to strike a deal with the best conferences it can to send teams to Memphis beginning with the 2014 game. It's the product of a ripple effect: The Liberty Bowl's contracts are up at the same time the rest of the bowl system is being overhauled. So while college football fans celebrate the arrival of a four-team playoff beginning that year, the folks who run Memphis' decades-old postseason game try to make sense of their place in the structure of it all. <\/p>\n
At this crossroads of sorts, and on the eve of Monday's game between Tulsa and Iowa State, a look at the bowl's public financial records and an extended interview with Ehrhart help shine a light on what it takes to put on this Memphis tradition and where it's heading. <\/p>\n
What it takes <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
See the article here: <\/p>\n
AutoZone Liberty Bowl approaching important 'offseason'<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Photo by Michael Donahue Steve Ehrhart, director of the AutoZone Liberty Bowl, says planning the game is a \"year-round endeavor.\" By late morning on Christmas Eve, the AutoZone Liberty Bowl offices in East Memphis were a hub of activity. Steve Ehrhart, the bowl's director for almost two decades now, sat in a chair behind a desk so filled with papers and file folders that it was hard to see the color of the surface Continue reading