Bowl crasher: How Santa got from the North Pole to halftime in Tempe

By Jon Gold

Two years ago, Bob Logan sat at a CAMPUSPEAK conference in Puerto Rico and listened as keynote speaker Kevin Smith of the University of Akron described three different types of Santa Claus.

The Fake Santas, who mock the sanctity of the costume. The Accidental Santas, like mall Santas or Salvation Army Santas, who might be collecting a check for their time. And All-In Santas, those who truly embody the spirit of Jolly Old St. Nick.

“So which are you,” he asked. “A fake Santa or an all-in Santa?”

Logan sat there and listened intently, and when Smith finished, Logan went right up to him.

“You want a great Santa story? Boy do I have one for you.” ••• It was 1979, and the Arizona football team had not advanced to the postseason since the 1968 Sun Bowl. And that was just its third bowl appearance ever. Before that, there was the 1921 San Diego East-West Christmas Classic and the 1949 Salad Bowl, and that’s it. Bowl games were scarce back then ... but still. Combined score for the three games, all losses: 82-23.

So when the Wildcats advanced to the Fiesta Bowl on Christmas Day of 1979 — largely on the strength of walk-on freshman kicker Brett Weber’s game-winning field goal over Arizona State in the 1979 Territorial Cup — Tucson was ready to bust out the party hats.

Logan, 22 at the time and a senior at Northern Arizona University, was back home in Tucson hanging with his best buddies from Salpointe Catholic High for winter break. As long-time Wildcat fans — almost all of them former football players for the Lancers — they weren’t about to miss the big game, with Arizona pitted against Dan Marino and the Pittsburgh Panthers in Tempe.

But Logan had bigger, bolder things in mind.

He called his older brother, Jim, who lived in Pittsburgh, and told him to watch the game. He’d be in the halftime show. He didn’t tell him how, he didn’t tell him why. He just said watch.

He called his best friend, Jay John — who’d later go on to a lengthy career as a men’s basketball coach all over the Pac12 — and told him to pick him up for the game, but added, ‘I’m not going to buy a ticket for the game, and I’m going to be in the halftime show, and you’re about to see why.’”

When John arrived, there was Logan, decked out from head-to-toe in a Santa Claus outfit, one his father had purchased for him years before. Logan acted as Santa for his father’s client’s children and got a kick out of it. Why not use it one more time? If the suit fits, right? ••• For those who knew Logan and his crew at the time, this story is not out of place.

“The idea that this Santa story is being written about, I could give you 15 others,” John said.

“I could give you 15 stories that live in infamy today. Salpointe football in the ‘70s, with that camp, practicing twice a day, meeting three times a day, we became brothers like no other, and we have so many stories because we’re all bleepin’ crazy.” Another story: “Two weeks after the Fiesta Bowl, we beat UCLA at McKale,” John said. “First thing we thought, let’s go get the nets. In the middle of everyone rushing the floor, we’re up at the rim, cutting down the net. It was an impromptu thing. We got 11 of the 12 strings before the security figured out what we were doing.”

So that is to say, Logan’s adventure was not exactly out of character.

And the Fiesta Bowl of 1979 was nothing like the Fiesta Bowl of 2019. If anything, it was closer to the Arizona Bowl of today, still in its relative infancy, just the eighth iteration of the game.

Things were not on lockdown that day, and a young Bob Logan knew that.

He figured, hey, they’re not going to arrest Santa on Christmas Day. What’s the worst that could happen?

So when the crew of Salpointe misfits arrived at Sun Devil Stadium and split up to buy tickets, Logan broke off and just … walked in. He’d worn his Santa costume the entire drive up from Tucson, he was ready to go.

As he walked in, a security guard grabbed his arm. Logan improvised quickly — “I’m part of the halftime show!” — and he was let in.

For the first half, he sat up in the stands as kids of all ages came up to say hello. By the middle of the second quarter, there was a little buzz around where he sat with his buddies. Would this really happen?

As halftime approached, he made his move. He walked straight down the steps, opened a gate down onto the field and acted like he belonged.

Another security guard approached.

“You’re not on my he says.

Logan refused to break character.

“Look buddy, I don’t know about any list. I’m supposed to be on that field. If there’s no Santa on the field on Christmas Day, how is that going to look? Do you really want to be responsible for arresting Santa on Christmas?”

Through sheer force of will — and the lack of smart phones in 1979 — Logan was let through. He was in. “The Pitt band is playing on the field, and I’m watching the clock, five minutes left, things are starting to wind down,” he said. “I’m not going to run in the middle of the band. I wanted to make it look like it was planned.”

Only one problem: A large box in the middle of the field. If there was a certain jolly fat man in that box, the jig was up, the cover blown. Why would there be two Santas?

Logan tried not to panic, and when the four corners of the box opened to reveal a large bouquet of balloons floating into the air, relief set in.

He ran onto the 50-yard line and waved like Miss America, only his smile brighter. He stared directly into the television cameras, and he said hello to his brother out in Pittsburgh, and he hoped he was list,” indeed watching.

Halftime over, he ran off the field and back up to his seats, no one the wiser.

Santa had just crashed the Fiesta Bowl, and only a few people in that stadium even knew. ••• Had Logan been caught that day, or done something truly foolish, this story might have been told long ago. It might have gone down in the annals of the Fiesta Bowl.

As it stands, only a few people in the world truly know it.

Logan and John can’t recall who else was in their caravan that day, and Logan’s older brother Jim tragically passed away at the age of 37 from an asthma attack. It has never been publicized before, only traded along with other tales among good friends.

For Logan, there have been plenty of stories. He’d go on to coach football at Salpointe for Ed Doherty and then joined the UA football staff alongside Larry Smith, first as a graduate assistant then as kicking game coordinator — “Max kicking field goals and beating ASU, I’m taking full credit for that,” — defensive line and outside linebackers.

After a successful stint with the Wildcats, he became head coach of the Bologna Doves professional football team in Italy before returning to Tucson to start his business career.

He’d end up serving as an associate athletic director for fundraising with the Wildcats before joining the UA College of Science for more than two decades as an assistant dean for external and corporate relations, a role from which he is semi-retired.

For years, Logan told the story to incredulous buddies who weren’t all too convinced of his bravado.

Finally, he had an “Aha!” moment. He remembered Daily Star photographer Jack Schaefer snapping photos of him walking off the field that day, cavorting with Wilbur Wildcat.

Over a decade after his star turn as Santa, he tracked down the photos that proved it so. Now he’s got his proof. Proof of the day Santa crashed the Fiesta Bowl.