It’s official: Holiday Bowl won’t be played. Here’s how NC State fans can get refunds
N.C. State’s football season ended Wednesday morning, both earlier and later than expected, when the Holiday Bowl officially canceled the game that had been scheduled for Tuesday night before UCLA pulled out.
With some N.C. State players flying directly home from San Diego on Wednesday instead of returning with the team to Raleigh, regrouping to play in another bowl game is not an option, so the failure to find a new opponent with only a few hours of notice left the bowl and the Wolfpack in a tight spot.
“After exhausting every possibility and contacting numerous schools personally and through the Holiday Bowl, we have no other option than to end our season,” N.C. State athletic director Boo Corrigan said in a statement Wednesday morning. “As disappointing as this stunning turn of events was, we must not let it diminish the accomplishments of our 2021 football team or forget the moments of joy that they brought us.”
The Holiday Bowl had been assisting in the search while discussing potential new broadcast windows with Fox, but admitted the inevitable Wednesday morning at 7:31 a.m. local time.
“Sadly we are announcing that the 2021 SDCCU Holiday Bowl is canceled,” bowl CEO Mark Neville said in a statement released by the bowl. “We worked closely with Boo Corrigan and the fantastic N.C. State Athletics staff to try and find a replacement team for UCLA, but were unable to do so.”
The Holiday Bowl staff presented N.C. State coach Dave Doeren with the Holiday Bowl Trophy during a team meeting at its hotel Wednesday morning. N.C. State later said it would claim a 10th win via forfeit, even though the NCAA will not recognize it.
“I commend Coach Doeren, his staff and especially our players for making great decisions and doing the right things to ensure that they were ready to play every week and all the way until yesterday,” Corrigan continued in the statement. “I can’t wait to watch them run it back in 2022.”
As N.C. State left its hotel Wednesday morning, departing senior Emeka Emezie hugged teammates as they boarded their buses. Grant Gibson carried the trophy to the bus, noting its weight.
UCLA, citing medical concerns, announced it a little more than four hours before kickoff it would not play Tuesday night, leaving the Wolfpack players and staff bewildered, disappointed and angry. A few unvaccinated Bruins players had tested positive for COVID before leaving Los Angeles, but the team went through all of the same bowl-week activities as N.C. State before the last-minute withdrawal.
That left the school and bowl scrambling through the night to no avail.
“We can’t find anyone,” Corrigan told The News & Observer on Tuesday night. “The bowl game has been great. The ACC has been great. We just can’t.”
N.C. State had been seeking a 10th win for only the second time in school history and was looking forward to sending out departing seniors like Emezie, Ickey Ekwonu and Ricky Person on a high note.
“It was really emotional, sad, upset, angry,” N.C. State linebacker Drake Thomas said Tuesday. “Those were going to be guys’ last time putting on the NC State uniform after six years of hard work, five years, four years, whatever it was. This was their last time to go out there and put on the uniform. Just to end it like that, it was a lot of emotion. Sad, angry, all of that.”
A number of Wolfpack fans made the trip from all over the country to San Diego, some of them arriving hours before the game was canceled. The San Diego Padres, who operate Petco Park, said in a statement that all tickets, suites and parking would be automatically refunded. Fans who purchased tickets through third-party sites like StubHub and SeatGeek have to contact those sites directly.
Staff photojournalist Ethan Hyman contributed to this report
This story was originally published December 29, 2021 at 10:48 AM.
