Par for the course in 2020, this college football bowl season is going to look much different.
For one, there are not as many bowls this year. Twenty-eight ended up being put together instead of the 42 originally scheduled. The reason for that is because many teams simply opted out of participating on top of other bowls preemptively canceling due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fortunately for the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla., officials, it has two teams in NC State and Kentucky that appear to be whole-heartedly embracing the opportunity.
NC State director of athletic Boo Corrigan did not seem to sense any hesitation on the Wolfpack’s desire to play.
“We’ve been so united in where we’ve been this year,” Corrigan noted. “The opportunity to play one more, to play against the University of Kentucky, to play in Jacksonville — all year coach [Dave] Doeren has been talking about not blinking.
“This wasn’t an opportunity to blink, it was an opportunity to move forward.”
“Our players and coaches felt like we weren’t done yet,” Doeren said. “It’s another opportunity to compete.
“We’ve invested a lot to this point. It’s the last time this group will get to play together, and we wanted to have one more ride and a chance to play a team outside of our league. Obviously, all of our games but one have been in league.
“We have great respect for the SEC. [Kentucky head coach] Mark [Stoops] and I have known each other forever. That will be kind of cool getting to play against each other in this game, but these kids are a special group. I would have hated to not have the opportunity to go out with them one more time.”
On Sunday evening, Stoops reportedly said that no players will be opting out for the bowl game from his sideline. UK director of athletics Mitch Barnhart added that the Wildcats see the upside in participating.
“We wanted to have an opportunity for those young men that want to compete one more time and have an opportunity to showcase their skills on a national stage in an NFL stadium against a really, really tough opponent North Carolina State,” Barnhart said. “And I just think there's a lot of positives for us.
“It's not easy. It requires a commitment to be discipline enough to go through the testing and all the protocols and all those pieces that are so hard, that our team has been really resilient and done that all year long. And we appreciate their faithfulness in that.”
TaxSlayer Gator Bowl president and CEO Rick Catlett added that their bowl officials always intended to put on a game.
“It doesn't do us any good after 76 years not to play a game,” he noted.
It will still be a far different experience. Instead of a four or five-day stay in Jacksonville filled with activities in the city, Catlett foresees just, at most, two days in Florida and a vastly scaled down event. There will be a limitedly supply of tickets available, too.
ACC and SEC officials also worked with the bowl game to produced what Catlett portrayed as a fair new payout system in light of limited ticket sales.
”It's very difficult to pay the amount of money that we were going to pay, but I think collectively. everybody wanted to play,” Catlett said. “And we were very pleased to be able to get to teams that had had good seasons that wanted to come play, too.”
——
• Talk about it inside The Wolves' Den
• Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes
• Learn more about our print and digital publication, The Wolfpacker
• Follow us on Twitter: @TheWolfpacker
• Like us on Facebook
