“Holiday Bowl…A Helluva Mess”

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I will let you tell me how you feel about what just happened to the Holiday Bowl just 4-hours before kickoff.

I will let you judge how this was handled.  Let you decide whether there is blame to be handed out.

I will let you decide what you feel now..

This is devastating to the Holiday Bowl and its leader Mark Neville.  This has serious financial implications to a 4-decade long success of bowl games.

This is a setback for the Padres, who went the extra mile to save the bowl game with the closing and demolition of Qualcomm Stadium, spending at a cost of in excess of 2M to renovate Petco for college football.

There are so many unanswered questions about the Covid outbreak that was the first domino that fell, that led to the ugly mishandling of information and then the  cancellation of the game.

UCLA’s new AD Martin Jarmond says he feels bad for his players, who won’t get to play another game.  He seemed willing to pass the blame onto his medical officials, who deemed it unsafe to play after positive tests showed up on Tuesday morning, tests probably taken on Monday in San Diego.

We’ll never know because Jarmond did not want to meet with the media, but issued a generalized press release.  Many thanks to Associate AD’s for writing something without all the facts.

How about feeling sorry for the Holiday Bowl?  For North Carolina State? For the fans of both schools?  For our community?

UCLA could have gotten ahead of this story, but elected to keep it behind the curtains.

Coach Chip Kelly did not open bowl practices, which would be a normal procedure.  He rambled on endlessly when asked this week about the Covid scare.

Was he covering up how many actual cases UCLA had?  Was he hiding behind the shield of student protection rights not to disclose medical issues?

Or was he just being stand-offish Chip Kelly, never dealing honestly about anything at UCLA during his (18-25) run, in which he still does not have a bowl win to his credit.

North Carolina State was upset, and went public, they were never told of Covid issues at UCLA, as if that would impact the Wolfpack to stop UCLA on a 3rd and long play.

How many UCLA players are we talking about?
What was the ratio of vaccinated to unvaxxed players who tested positive.
Hey UCLA, how about a little transparency in the mess you are responsible for?

Words like ‘lied too’…’dissatisfied’…’betrayed’…’unfair’ came out of the Wolfpack locker-room, from its AD, its head coach, its’ players.

Words like ‘cover-up’ seem front and center to me.

This is bad for the Holiday Bowl, losing a second game in a row to Covid.  Putting an enormous strain on their limited Bowl reserves that were around 3M this year.

What happens to the 3.2M-due both the Bruins and Wolfpack?
What about the cost of the renovation-who pays that?
How do you refund money to 30,000-plus ticket buyers?
Anyone compensating all those fans from NC State who flew cross country?

Why wasn’t there any warning from UCLA to the Holiday Bowl this was happening?
Could an alternate opponent have been found in short order?

Can you postpone the game for a week, play it next week, with the hope in the next 7-days all the positive tests at UCLA become clean tests?.

I understand the whole medical situation is ‘fluid’ with a virus that can show up quickly and leave five days later.  But this should have been handled better.

It would have been nice if UCLA were more honest and upfront.

Invoke a word like arrogrance, greed, selfishness, stupidity to describe the Bruins and its head coach.

Is there a solution?  Who knows?

But I think UCLA needs to come up with truthful answers, if they ever want to come back to this Holiday Bowl in the future.

Tell me how you feel

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