New rules allowing college athletes to transfer teams and be financially compensated are having a direct impact on San Diego’s Holiday Bowl.
The entire national bowl system is under pressure by the new collegiate infrastructure. Observers predict big changes are forthcoming and that bowl games will need to adapt to the modern landscape.
This year’s Holiday Bowl game, sponsored by DIRECTV, is scheduled for Friday, December 27 at 5 p.m. After a short run in downtown it was moved from Petco Park to Snapdragon Stadium in Mission Valley. The matchup includes nationally ranked #21 Syracuse (9-3) and beleaguered Washington State University (8-4).
Bowl teams are paired via traditional alignments with college conferences. The Holiday Bowl has been aligned of late with the ACC and and the Pac-12.
After being picked to compete in the Holiday Bowl, Washington State head coach Jack Dickert left the team, and star quarterback John Mateer transferred to Oklahoma University. More than two dozen other top players have also transferred (though they do remain eligible to play in the bowl game).
Oddsmakers reacted to that information by bumping up Syracuse as a 16.5-point favorite to win.
[UPDATED 12/28/24: Syracuse beat Washington State, 52-35. The announced attendance was 23,920; The San Diego Union-Tribune estimated the actual attendance was 18,000.]
The Holiday Bowl is not the only game this season drastically affected by the college transfer portal. After Marshall University was selected to play Army in this year’s Independence Bowl, Marshall lost its coach and three dozen players to the transfer portal, and dropped out of the game.
Competitiveness and relevancy are both bowl game factors. This year marked the start of a new, 12-team NCAA College Football Playoff format. The Holiday Bowl is one of dozens of games not part of the ongoing tournament, which resumes December 31 and crowns a national champion on January 20, 2025.
Note: While on-field play during this year’s game may be questionable, there does still appear to be palpable excitement for the pageantry of downtown’s Holiday Bowl Parade. Tens of thousands of enthusiastic fans are expected to come out and watch marching bands, floats and extra-large balloon renditions of whales, penguins and Mr. Potato Head bob down the Harbor Drive parade route.
The recent history of the Holiday Bowl includes a five-year contract to play at Petco Park starting in 2020. The game was called off that year due to the pandemic.
The 2021 Holiday Bowl slated North Carolina State to play against UCLA. Just hours before kickoff, UCLA withdrew, citing a failure to meet COVID-19 protocols.
Petco Park, the baseball-only home field of the San Diego Padres located in East Village, finally got to host its first college gridiron game in 2022. (The site’s lease agreement had to be amended and more than a million dollars was spent converting Petco into a temporary football field.)
A primary reason for moving the game downtown was that former site Qualcomm Stadium had been demolished (after the San Diego Chargers left town). San Diego State University’s Snapdragon Stadium did not yet exist.
Holiday Bowl officials initially touted the downtown package for the game and its fan-friendly activations as “a perfect fit.”
“Moving the game and all the events downtown is a complete game-changer,” Mark Neville, CEO of what was then called the San Diego County Credit Union Holiday Bowl, said at the time. “We’ll have the best bowl experience in the country.”
In 2022 and ’23, the games at Petco didn’t sell out. The average attendance for those two years was 35,000. During its heyday at Jack Murphy/Qualcomm, attendance often topped 60,000.
Founded in 1978, the Holiday Bowl definitely has a storied past filled with high-scoring and action-packed endings. Holiday Bowl participants who went on to win NFL Super Bowls include Brigham Young University quarterbacks Jim McMahon (Chicago Bears) and Steve Young (San Francisco 49ers).
San Diego boosters, and some San Diego media, are reluctant to publicly address any negativity aimed at the Holiday Bowl.
Neville points out today that the nonprofit Holiday Bowl organization has done great work for the local community and still does. Since 1978, the game has reportedly generated a $1 billion economic impact for San Diego.
“I think the spirit of [this] story is totally misguided, uninformed and unnecessarily damaging,” he says. “You should spend time and dig into the system a lot more before just grabbing at low lying fruit and piling on what other media (the uninformed and unoriginal ones) say about the bowl system.”
Earlier this week, The San Diego Sun unscientifically scoured East Village looking for locals’ opinions about the Holiday Bowl.
Few people knew the game had departing from downtown. Those who were aware of the Holiday Bowl expressed mild reactions.
“I think it’s better in Petco, with all the synergy that surrounds the park,” downtown’s Columbia District resident Brian Finley says. “But it does make more sense to move it to a football stadium.”
East Village resident Amy Vanbergen would have preferred the game stay at Petco, but football isn’t her biggest Holiday Bowl concern.
“If the game moves to Snapdragon it doesn’t really matter to me,” she says. “So long as the parade is downtown.”
What route the Holiday Bowl and national bowl programming powerbrokers take in coming years remains to be seen.
Holiday Bowl Activities
- The Holiday Bowl teams are staying in downtown San Diego hotels. Washington State University’s headquarters is the Manchester Grand Hyatt. Syracuse is bunking next door at the Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina.
- Both university marching bands will compete in a friendly Bowl Bash on Thursday, December 26 from 5 to 7 p.m. in the heart of the Gaslamp Quarter. The streets will be closed at Fifth Avenue and Market Street while the bands attempt to out-trumpet each other.
- The 29th annual Port of San Diego Game Day 5K Run/Walk starts at 9:45 am at Ash Street, with the course running south on Harbor Drive.
- The beloved Holiday Bowl Parade starts at 10 a.m. on Friday, rain or shine. It’s free to attend (grandstand tickets are $30).
For more information on the game and the post-game KGB SkyShow at Snapdragon Stadium, go to: Holiday Bowl. SDSun
–additional reporting by Joshua Silla
