SAN DIEGO — The Holiday Bowl is still weeks away from announcing a new title sponsor, but San Diego's annual postseason college football game has a time and a date.
The 2023 Holiday Bowl is scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 27. Kickoff will be shortly after 5 p.m. for the Fox national broadcast at Petco Park.
The Holiday Bowl, which matches teams from the Pac-12 and ACC, is traditionally slotted between Christmas and New Year's. This is the 35th straight time it will be played the final week of the year.
"The Holiday Bowl looks forward to filling Petco Park again this year with an amazing game and truly incredible fan experience," said Mark Neville, CEO of Sports San Diego, which produces the annual Holiday Bowl. "With the primetime kickoff slot on broadcast television for the second straight year on FOX, we are assured that millions of fans across the country will be tuning in to watch."
Neville said the KGB SkyShow will again follow the football game.
The Holiday is among four bowl games on Dec. 27, along with the Military Bowl (11 a.m. PT), Duke's Mayo Bowl (2:30 p.m. PT) and TaxAct Texas Bowl (6 p.m. PT), which are all televised by ESPN.
SDCCU had been the game's title sponsor since 2017, but the bowl announced in May that it was looking for a new sponsor. Neville said then that he hopes to have the new sponsor in place by "late summer, early fall."
The Holiday Bowl filed a lawsuit in May against the Pac-12 and UC Regents to recover losses from the 2021 game, which was canceled fewer than five hours before kickoff when UCLA said if couldn't play because of COVID-19 issues within the program.
The litigation it is not expected to impact the Pac-12 sending a team to San Diego to play an ACC opponent. Neville said the contract dispute has no bearing on the 2023 game.
Oregon edged North Carolina 28-27 in last year's game. It was the first time the game was played downtown at Petco Park. And it was the first time the game was played in two years after being canceled twice amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is the 44th edition of the Holiday Bowl, which was played in Mission Valley until moving downtown at Petco Park.
After two decades of matching Pac-12 teams against those from either the Big 12 or Big 10, a new contract began in 2020 that replaced the latter conferences with the ACC.
That introduced 14 new candidates — plus Notre Dame, which is slotted with ACC teams for bowl purposes — to the Holiday mix.
