The pandemic has taken another notable college football bowl game.
Barstool Sports was set to host and sponsor a college football bowl game for the first time this year. The popular sports media company was set to host the game between Central Michigan and Boise State, with the contest taking place in Arizona.
Unfortunately, the bowl game has been axed.
On Monday afternoon, Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy announced that the game has been canceled due to a breakout in cases within the Broncos program.
The @theARIZONABOWL is officially canceled. It sucks. The Az Bowl Committee did everything in power to save the game. Huge loss of money for us and them. WSU said Sun Bowl or nothing. CMU was willing to move. Came down to money.
— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) December 28, 2021
Washington State was reportedly targeted as a potential replacement for Boise State, though the Cougars will play in the Sun Bowl instead. They will now be facing Central Michigan.
“We feel for the young men in our program who were very much looking forward to closing out their season, and for some, their football careers,” Boise State athletic director Jeramiah Dickey said in a statement on Monday. “I would personally like to thank Kym Adair and her team at the Arizona Bowl for putting together a first-class student-athlete and fan experience that we are extremely disappointed to miss.”
The Barstool Arizona Bowl is the fourth bowl game canceled this year.
Central Michigan, which was already in Tucson, has been released from Arizona Bowl & will play Washington State in Sun Bowl at noon ET Friday in El Paso sources told @ActionNetworkHQ. Arizona is 4th bowl canceled because of COVID issues along w/Hawaii, Fenway & Military
— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) December 28, 2021
Several Barstool Sports employees have taken to social media to react to the tough news.
I’m devastated that the Arizona Bowl got cancelled. Was so excited for this week. So many people had been working their ass off to make this all work.
— Big Cat (@BarstoolBigCat) December 28, 2021
While spikes in cases continue to alter plans across the sports world, many are wondering if the protocols need to be changed.
Bowl games are getting canceled because protocols developed 18 months ago haven’t evolved quickly enough. These COVID protocol issues exist because we’re testing asymptomatic college athletes.
I mean, what are we even doing here?
— Barrett Sallee (@BarrettSallee) December 26, 2021
However, this is where we’re at, and it doesn’t look like anything is going to change anytime soon. We’ll see if any more bowl games are impacted moving forward.
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