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Four bowl games will reportedly be among those that will not be played as scheduled, as college football programs continue to cope with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
According to Brett McMurphy, those are the Military Bowl in Annapolis, Md., the Guaranteed Rate Bowl in Phoenix, Ariz., and the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, La. McMurphy also reports that a 4th bowl could be canceled as well: the Armed Forces Bowl in Fort Worth, Tex., or the Birmingham Bowl in Alabama.
The issue no doubt appears to be the number of available teams.
The Military Bowl has a tie-in with the ACC and the American, the Guaranteed Rate Bowl has tie-ins with the Big 12 and Pac-12, while Army was contracted to play in the Independence Bowl this year against a Pac-12 team. Meanwhile, the Armed Forces Bowl would have featured an SEC and Pac-12 team, with the SEC and AAC set to send a team each to Birmingham—or a Conference USA and MAC team could serve as alternates.
However, with 7 Pac-12 teams and 6 ACC teams opting out, along with several Group of 5 programs, the list of teams willing to play was a short one, to say the least.
Sydney is an Atlanta-based journalist who has covered everything from SEC and ACC football to MLS, the U.S. men's national soccer team and professional tennis. His work has appeared on such platforms as SB Nation, Cox Media Group and FanSided.
