SAN DIEGO — Tuesday night’s SDCCU Holiday Bowl game between No. 18 North Carolina State and UCLA has been canceled, Holiday Bowl CEO Mark Neville confirmed.
UCLA’s football Twitter account announced it was unable to participate in what was scheduled to be the first football game played at Petco Park.
“The UCLA football team is unable to participate in tonight’s San Diego County Credit Union Holiday Bowl due to COVID-19 protocols within the Bruins’ program.”
Earlier, Bruce Feldman, part of Fox’s broadcast crew for the game, tweeted, “The Bruins D-Line room has been decimated by COVID issues. The Bruins were down to two interior linemen (Monday) for this game with a converted LB as the back-up noce guard, and were set to play but then had more COVID issues today.”
Neville said the Holiday Bowl was preparing a statement, but officials at this point are faced with a lot more questions than answers.
“This isn’t in the playbook,” Neville said.
UCLA Athletic Director Martin Jarmond issued a statement that read: “We are extremely grateful to the Holiday Bowl, students, fans, sponsors and the people of San Diego for their support this week … We are deeply disappointed for our young men in the football program that worked extremely hard for this opportunity. My heart goes out to them. The health and safety of our students will always be our North Star.”
North Carolina State also tweeted about the cancellation.
This is the fifth bowl game canceled within the past week.
The other canceled games were Friday’s Hawaii Bowl (because of Hawaii), Monday’s Military Bowl (Boston College), Wednesday’s Fenway Bowl (Virginia) and this week’s Arizona Bowl (Boise State). Texas A&M had to withdraw from Friday’s Gator Bowl because of COVID issues, but Rutgers was found as a replacement to play Wake Forest in the game. Central Michigan, which was to play Boise State in the Arizona Bowl, was shifted to the Sun Bowl to play Washington State after Miami had to pull out of the El Paso game.
