They’re a Little Unseasoned at the Postseason : Freedom Bowl: San Diego State’s athletic department is bustling as it plans for a rare Aztec bowl appearance.

SAN DIEGO —  There is no “business as usual” in the athletic department at San Diego State these days.

Take the secretaries, for instance.

Constance Rhea had to skip the department’s annual Christmas party Tuesday. She had no choice because she was too busy making out per diem meal-money checks for the football team’s trip to the Freedom Bowl next week.

And Nancy White spent Wednesday morning on a security mission in a screaming police car.

Maybe the police car wasn’t exactly screaming, but when she has grandchildren, she won’t have to tell them that. It was actually moving along quietly, a campus police car escorting her to the bank to pick up enough cash to cover more meal money demands for next week.

“I never thought I’d have that much money in my briefcase,” White declared.

Business as usual? Ha!

To a school such as Notre Dame, planning for a bowl trip is second nature.

To a school used to playing second-fiddle, where do you begin?

Two places, really.

* The NCAA Postseason Football Handbook, a guide published specifically to help schools plan bowl trips.

* The hotel.

Don Kaverman, an SDSU associate athletic director who works with football, and Dave Ohton, SDSU strength coach, visited several hotels in the Anaheim area Dec. 5 and 6. They stayed mainly with hotels recommended by the Orange County Sports Assn., organizers of the Freedom Bowl.

“Our stay up there will involve eight nights,” Kaverman said. “We’ll be setting up football offices, sports information offices. We have to move our whole operation up there. The ticket office. And we’ll be moving lots of equipment. Computers. Our football staff will be functioning up there for 10 days.”

Not all of the trips to prospective hotels lasted very long. One hotel mailed SDSU several brochures and had its corporate sales people woo Kaverman over the telephone. But a few minutes after Kaverman and Ohton arrived at the hotel, they learned that hotel management already had made a commitment to host Tulsa boosters.

That shortened their sit-down considerably.

Kaverman and Ohton had several questions before signing an agreement with a hotel. What about meals? What about a media work room? How about suites for the coaches, faculty and staff? How are the parking facilities? What about a shuttle service? How far away is the nearest fast food place? Is the hotel within walking distance of any entertainment or malls for the players? And what of the availability of rooms for cheerleaders, boosters and the band?

Basically, planning a bowl trip is like setting up for an NFL training camp, except you have only about three weeks to do it. SDSU officials also had to select a practice facility. They ended up with a field at UC Irvine, but Irvine has no football team . . . and no goal post. So the Aztecs are borrowing a goal post from USC for the week.

What’s a little negotiating?

Or a lot of negotiating. The UC Irvine practice facility is costing the Aztecs $5,400.

You have to be nimble. Ohton, who is coordinating the football team’s end of things, learned that this week. Wednesday afternoon, he finished the Aztecs’ itinerary for the trip--a total of 200 copies of a six-page itinerary, right down to a map of the team hotel in Irvine.

Twenty minutes before practice ended, Aztec Coach Al Luginbill walked up to Ohton and said something. They had forgotten to include a chapel service on the two Sunday mornings SDSU will be in Irvine. Time for a new itinerary.

“Coach, can’t we give them an addendum?” Ohton protested.

“Coach, I want it done right,” Luginbill replied.

So for a couple of lousy omissions, Ohton revised the entire thing.

“But you know what?” Ohton said. “He’s right.”

The itinerary includes several planned activities, such as a day at Disneyland--an outing that has just about driven Kaverman goofy. Already, he and White, his secretary, have revised their Disneyland ticket list at least four times because of people changing requests.

They have to come up with a participants’ list for three or four events this week, either for complimentary tickets or so their hosts--such as those for the team dinner at an Anaheim restaurant--can plan properly.

And if it is not tricky enough planning for themselves, there are a couple of times where Tulsa--SDSU’s Freedom Bowl opponent--has to be considered. The two schools happened to pick the same day to have their team dinner at Mr. Stox. In order to accommodate both teams, the restaurant has to serve dinner to one team at 4:15 p.m. Both SDSU and Tulsa wanted the later time slot, so they flipped a coin.

Tulsa won. SDSU will eat dinner early.

However, the Aztecs got even on a second coin flip. They wanted to wear their all-black home uniforms and Tulsa wanted to wear its blue home jerseys. The Aztecs won this flip and will wear black.

But before the football team gets to game night, there are practices, film sessions and meetings. Ohton is attempting to arrange the hotel to meet the coaches’ specifications.

“The floor plan is very similar to here,” Ohton said, referring to SDSU’s football complex. “We’ll meet in the same rooms every day, at the same times, we’ll eat in the same place.

“There are a lot of individual needs. Every coach is going to be coaching in another area for eight days. You have your own key to the (meeting) rooms, you lock it when you leave. We need our own training room--a taping area and a treatment area.”

There also will be a hospitality room for the players--a very large room in the hotel in which they can get together at night and watch television.

And, Ohton is in charge of the players’ roommate list. It’s not like the regular season, though. A handful of players, for example, will have their wives along on the trip. And unlike at the Super Bowl, players who have wives will room with their wives.

All of which is enough to keep the fax machines between San Diego and Irvine whirring.

“I’ve never used a fax machine in my life more than I have the last two weeks,” Ohton said.

But as Luginbill said, he wants things done right. He figures the players have earned this opportunity for the school, so he wants them to enjoy their time. The NCAA allows a school to give each player up to $300 in gifts for a bowl appearance, so Aztec players will be receiving Freedom Bowl warm-up suits, hats, T-shirts and commemorative plaques with their pictures.

The experience also will be good for the school. First, it means an extra month of practice for the players, which gives the team a jump on next year. And, it helps recruiting, especially since SDSU recruits aggressively in Orange County.

Funny how a bowl appearance grabs people’s attention. Equipment companies have been calling Steve Bartel, SDSU equipment manager, offering things such as wrist bands, chin straps, gloves and jerseys, most with the Aztec and Freedom Bowl logo depicted. Bartel said the Aztecs probably will wear much of the stuff. They already knew they had to order each player a new jersey with the Freedom Bowl logo on it, which the player gets to keep after the game.

Bartel, though, can hardly make it to the phone. The SDSU equipment room is loaded with boxes bearing gifts for visits such as to Children’s Hospital in Anaheim--things like SDSU caps--in addition to boxes waiting to be moved to the team hotel and practice facility.

No problem. Everyone at SDSU will tell you these frantic three weeks beat the alternative. The Holiday Bowl has an agreement whereby the Western Athletic Conference champion gets free use of SDSU’s practice facilities during the week before the game.

That team only has to pay SDSU personnel who work in the locker rooms. And the SDSU people only get to watch.

“They use your facility, they get to do all of the (bowl) stuff,” Bartel said. “And you do their wash and go to their practices. You stand there going, ‘This must be fun.’ ”