Those in Southern California have been preparing for Tuesday night’s Holiday Bowl between UCLA and North Carolina State for some time now.
Set to take place at Petco Park in San Diego Tuesday evening at 5 pm PST, the game has now reportedly been canceled due to a COVID-19 outbreak within the Bruins football program.
According to Bruce Feldman of The Athletic, UCLA’s defensive line room has been decimated by COVID issues. Realistically, it’s hard to actually play a football game without a defensive line.
This is just the continuation of the college football bowl season being impacted big time by the ongoing COVID-19 spike due to the Omicron variant. This is now the fifth bowl game of the season to be canceled.
Holiday Bowl beetween UCLA and North Carolina State canceled
Previously, the Arizona Bowl between Boise State and Central Michigan slated for Monday was canceled. That joined the Military Bowl (Boston College-East Carolina), Fenway Bowl (Virginia-SMU) and Hawaii Bowl (Hawaii-Memphis) as postseason games to be canceled.
As for the Holiday Bowl, this will now represent the second consecutive time the annual game has been canceled due to COVID-19. It had taken place every year from 1978-2019.