Holiday Bowl sues Pac-12 and UC regents over UCLA’s 2021 withdrawal from game

The San Diego Bowl Game Assn. is seeking a minimum payment of $3 million in compensatory damages from the Pac-12 Conference and the University of California Regents, stemming from the UCLA football team backing out of the 2021 Holiday Bowl in the hours before kickoff because of a rash of positive COVID-19 tests that depleted the depth of its defensive line. “Despite the Pac-12’s good faith efforts to find an amicable and fair resolution, the Holiday Bowl filed a lawsuit this week seeking to leverage for its own financial gain the global COVID-19 pandemic, which led to the cancellation of the 2021 Holiday Bowl,” said a Pac-12 statement Wednesday. The clause states: “No party hereto shall be held responsible for damages caused by delay or failure to perform under this agreement when such delay or failure is due to fire, act of God, national emergency, terrorist acts, labor dispute, inclement weather, legal acts of public impediment making the holding of the HBG undesirable upon the part of any party hereto, actions by any member or members of the opposing team scheduled to play in the HBG, or any unavoidable casualty, which cannot be reasonably forecast or provided against.” The 2020 Holiday Bowl was canceled because of pandemic restrictions in California, which hurt the SDBGA financially. The Pac-12 will be pushing for the court to require the SDBGA to fulfill its contractual obligation to pay the conference $2.45 million for Oregon’s participation in the 2022 Holiday Bowl.