For NC State, Holiday Bowl against UCLA is both an ending and a beginning
As N.C. State’s players wandered out onto the field at Petco Park, phones raised to record their surroundings, getting a rare view of a baseball stadium from the inside out, it had that end-of-the-road sense that bowl games almost always do.
There isn’t always a finish line in college football, but when there is, this is what it looks like: that first glimpse of an unfamiliar venue that will host a game against an unfamiliar opponent in an unfamiliar place.
The incoming recruiting class of 2017 took a group photo. Players posed for pictures in front of the giant video board that looms over left field. Some merely marveled at how the football field had been squeezed between the first-base dugout and the left-field wall – with precious little space to spare at the latter end. As they waited for their time to enter the field, they watched as a Navy parachute team practiced its landings.
Finally getting on the field closed the circle of anticipation that has built over the past few weeks, with Fox relentlessly promoting the game during its NFL coverage to the point where Devin Leary has spent almost as much time on TV in December as he does when the Wolfpack is actually playing.
For N.C. State, Monday’s wide-eyed walkthrough ahead of Tuesday’s Holiday Bowl against UCLA marked not merely the end of one season, but really of two, the conclusion to 18 months of disruption and upheaval and eventual success.
The Wolfpack players claimed a central role in the campus’ collective reaction to the George Floyd killing during the summer of 2020, then spent weeks apart from each other that fall as the ACC staggered through an abbreviated football season without the safety net of vaccines, one that ended with an unremarkable and brief bowl experience.
This season has been played amid relative normalcy, such as it is, with the euphoria of the long-sought win over Clemson fading amid losses to Miami and Wake Forest, even if the shocking comeback against North Carolina was salve for some of those wounds. Now it concludes with a fulfilling and rewarding time in San Diego that has been, in every respect, a long time coming.
“I said this back before the season started, it really wasn’t like – sometimes you start the year like this is a brand new team,” N.C. State coach Dave Doeren said Monday. “This team was almost a continuation of last year’s team. We didn’t lose many parts. So it’s really been kind of a two-years season with them. And last year’s bowl game was more like a road game, so to have the true experience of a bowl is a great treat for these guys.”
If this is the end of one very long road, it’s also just a waypoint on another much longer road. With stars like center Grant Gibson and linebackers Isaiah Moore and Drake Thomas and quarterback Devin Leary all committing to return, among others – so many are coming back, the Wolfpack signed only 12 recruits – this bowl game has the potential to be as much a springboard to the future as it is a celebration of the past.
“It’s a chance to celebrate all of us,” Doeren said. “I know UCLA is the same way. We’ve been through more with these guys, when you talk about all the things socially that happened in our country, you talk about pandemics and COVID protocols, it’s been a lot.”
But there’s no question it’s a celebration. No question at all. And one a long time in coming, even with what may still be yet to come.
This story was originally published December 28, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "For NC State, Holiday Bowl against UCLA is both an ending and a beginning."
