As if losing the Chargers was not enough of a football hit for the city of San Diego, now it is losing one of its two college football bowl games. The San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl has shut down after a fun 12-year run on the college football bowl calendar.
The San Diego Bowl Game Association came to the decision to focus their efforts on just one bowl game, the Holiday Bowl, moving forward. The move comes at a time when the future of Qualcomm Stadium is in question, and the bowl group is also weighing the possibility of moving the Holiday Bowl to Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres.
“College football and the bowl game structure has gone through major changes through the years and our board feels the time is right to focus our efforts on one post-season game,” said Mark Neville, executive director of the San Diego Bowl Game Association. “The San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl staged exciting match-ups for more than a decade and we were one of the few cities to host two bowl games.”
There is no suggestion the decision to trim down the number of bowl games in operation in San Diego is a direct result of the Chargers leaving town, but it is another blow to the sports scene in San Diego, and perhaps a disappointing development for the most recent sponsor of the Poinsettia Bowl, San Diego County Credit Union. If removing one bowl game means a better effort to improve the attractiveness of the Holiday Bowl, that’s good, but the Poinsettia Bowl means two fewer teams going to a bowl game (for now).
“Our region sees the value in keeping the Holiday Bowl in San Diego and I applaud the San Diego Bowl Game Association’s tough, but smart decision to focus its energies on one bowl game, the Holiday Bowl,” said San Diego County Supervisor Ron Roberts.
The Poinsettia Bowl had a strong relationship with Navy, which made sense considering the US Navy’s influence in San Diego. Navy played in four of the Poinsettia Bowl games, while the local San Diego State participated in three.
As with most bowl games, attendance concerns were always there for the Poinsettia Bowl, although this past season’s game drew 28,114 fans for BYU and Wyoming. The game never had fewer than 21,000 fans in attendance and routinely had crowds between 28,000 and 35,000 for the lower-tier bowl game.
Those who think there are too many bowl games will likely be happy to see some contraction in the bowl calendar, although there could always be a new bowl game to takes its place. It seems bowl games are like the heads of the mythical hydra – take one away and two more may pop up in its place.
