SAN DIEGO — Time is a flat circle, so they say, and Tuesday afternoon’s last-minute Holiday Bowl cancellation is proof positive of that fact. In an event reminiscent of the NCAA’s late-night cancellation of the baseball team’s College World Series run, the UCLA Bruins bowed out of their bowl game less than five hours before kickoff due to COVID-19 issues.
“It’s hard not to be angry,” said athletics director Boo Corrigan. “And it’s not angry at anyone in particular, but you’re angry about the situation, because you know how hard the men in our program have fought to get to this point, right, and what they’ve given up during the process of all this, to get here. Yeah, it’s an emotional time.”
The late pullout caused immediate uproar, as NC State’s players and coaches were unaware of Bruins’ COVID-19 spread up until the moments before The Athletic and Fox Sports’ Bruce Feldman broke the news. Head coach Dave Doeren said he received a call from Corrigan about the situation just before Feldman sent his tweet. Doeren’s players weren’t even that well informed. Sophomore linebacker Drake Thomas said he learned the game was canceled through Twitter, which Corrigan called an “abject failure.”
“You figure [if] you get through the whole week, you’re gonna play,” Thomas said. “You wake up on game day, you’re getting ready to go eat a pregame meal, [you figure] that [it’s] set in stone you’re playing. So just to see that, it was disheartening.”
Disappointment quickly led to players speaking out on social media. “Real pain man,” tweeted redshirt junior center Grant Gibson. “Can’t be real…,” tweeted junior punter Trenton Gill. Others emphasized the fact that players gave up their holidays to prepare and travel for the bowl.
Graduate safety Cyrus Fagan kept things simply put, tweeting “We came to yall state for this 💩.” Fans of both the Wolfpack and Bruins also complained, as canceling the game so late meant thousands have come to San Diego and paid for costly cross-country flights and hotel rooms just to see the game canceled.
“We felt lied to, to be honest,” Doeren said. “I think we felt like UCLA probably knew something was going on on their team [and] didn’t tell anybody on our side; we had no clue that they were up against that. So, I don’t feel like it was very well handled from their university. It would have been great to have had a heads up that this could happen. So maybe two or three days ago, we could have found a plan B. Disappointing.”
Still looking to tie a bow on this season and win 10 games, Corrigan said both in a statement and to the press that NC State continues to look for a replacement game. It won’t be easy to find a new bowl, or a new opponent, however.
For its part, the Holiday Bowl seems just as interested as NC State is in finding a new opponent for the Wolfpack. In a statement, it said the Holiday Bowl “won’t be played tonight,” with more information to come. As one of the better-paying bowls, should the logistics work out, the Holiday Bowl is in a good position to entice a team to join up.
Doeren said logistical questions include whether the team could even play in PetCo Park past the 28th, given that it’s a baseball stadium, as well as hotel arrangements for NC State and travel arrangements for any team that wished to fill in for UCLA. And that’s without considering the football side of things.
“How many days will we get to prepare?” Doeren said. “I’m not going to just schedule a team for the game tomorrow, not have time to prepare a quarterback for blitzes he’s going to have to see. That’s not fair to him. But is it possible? Yeah, I don’t know how possible it is.”
Bowl game or no bowl game, the 2021-22 NC State Wolfpack team has proved a remarkable one. After turning in a 4-8 (1-7 ACC) 2019-20 campaign, Doeren and his squad ripped off a combined record of 17-7 (13-5 ACC) these past two seasons, with this year one-upping the last in wins. Through injuries, doubts and a pandemic, all these players do is respond favorably.
“You want them to have some good things happen — and we’ve had a lot, like I don’t want this to diminish what happened here this year, nine wins with seven defensive starters out for the season? Come on; that was a really good season for us,” Doeren said. “But yeah, you feel like we deserve a little bit of luck here, you know?”
Lady Luck may not have shown NC State her favor today, but in the grand scheme of things, that doesn’t seem to matter too much. The Wolfpack’s been doing pretty well without her help.
“First noble truth out there is that life’s not fair,” Doeren said. “When you start thinking it is, you’re going to feel really bad. And I think that’s where we’re at right now. This was an unfair thing that happened. And like all other unfair things, there’s not going to be a rationale or a storyline that makes it feel good. It’s not. We’re just going to have to deal with it.”
