The 2020 Bahamas Bowl and Hawai’i Bowl have been canceled due to both health concerns from the COVID-19 pandemic and travel restrictions to the bowl sites, ESPN announced Friday.
“We are disappointed that we aren’t able to stage events at these premier destinations this year,” said Pete Derzis, ESPN senior vice president of college sports programming & ESPN Events in the release. “We are committed to bringing both games back in 2021, and we thank our conference partners, sponsors and the local communities for their ongoing support and understanding.”
At least one of the bowls stated its intent to return in 2021, when it hopes the travel restrictions will be loosened.
We will see you in 2021. pic.twitter.com/4XiP1xvBMN
— Hawai'i Bowl (@HawaiiBowl) October 2, 2020
No other bowls have as yet announced cancellations or postponements. More updates will be shared as they are made available.
I can see why they would postpone the Bahamas Bowl, but I don’t see why they would postpone the Hawaii Bowl since Hawaii is in the US
My first guess was that Hawaii has some really strict quarantine rules, but I noticed that Hawaii is scheduled to play games in the MWC starting in November, so I’m not sure why they can’t host a bowl game in December.
Now my Christmas Eve tradition is a bust :(
I have always wanted a few less bowls and I get that logistically current travel restrictions prevent those bowls from being played in those locations.
However I am not sure we will see any more bowls canceled for that reason, however how many lower tier bowls will be played only for the TV audience (almost all on ESPN and half run by ESPN) will be interesting to see.
Generally, the Go5 v Go5 bowls take place before Christmas. With most conferences playing their championship games on 12/19 you lose a Saturday that was likely to have several baby bowls, and teams playing on 12/19 can’t play until after Christmas. They’ve run out of days to schedule these games. There might be a draw for fans to have an excuse turn a bowl game into a vacation, but not this year with travel concerns and short notice to book trips. Makes sense to cut games with a high cost of getting teams and TV crews to the games.