Bayou Classic to be part of an ‘epic sports weekend’
19th November 2018 · 0 Comments
The Big Easy will be the center of the football universe this week as the annual Bayou Classic approaches and comes just two days after the New Orleans Saints and the Atlanta Falcons renew their heated NFC South rivalry with a showdown in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome on Thanksgiving night.
The Bayou Classic, a perennial fan favorite that features the Southern University Jaguars and the Grambling State University Tigers, officially began as the Classic in Tulane Stadium and has been held in the Superdome every year since with the exception of 2006, when damage from Hurricane Katrina forced the game to be moved to Houston.
The game returned in 2007, although there had been talk for some time about moving the game to a different city or cities in response to the high hotel room rental rates. But that talk has dissipated in recent years and the game continues to grow in popularity with many people calling it a “Black College Family Reunion” and the premier Black college sports event.
That popularity has only been helped by the airing of the game on NBC and the increased use of social media to promote the game and all of the other events related to the Bayou Classic that are held over the long Thanksgiving weekend.
The game comes during what used to be a lull in tourism business in the city, with many in the tourism industry counting on the holiday season and local bowl games to generate cash.
But the Bayou Classic has proven to be a proverbial shot in the arm for local hotels, restaurants, bars and other businesses and is estimated to have an economic impact that exceeds $50 million.
More than 66,000 fans headed to the Superdome last November to watch Grambling defeat Southern, with tens of thousands more revelers flocking to the city to renew ties with old classmates, attend reunions and fundraisers and take advantage of all that the Crescent City has to offer in terms of shopping, sightseeing and delicious cuisine.
The overlap of the Saints-Falcons game and e Bayou Classic ensures a huge economic windfall for the city and will make it even more difficult to locate a vacant hotel room in the New Orleans area.
“Yeah, good luck with that,” Alexander James, a Virginia resident who attended Howard, said last Wednesday. “I booked my room for the Bayou Classic in August and many of the rooms had already been reserved.
“I leave this city every year feeling depressed,” Glen David joked. “I always have a great time and I literally do not want to leave.
“It usually takes me a couple of weeks trounce back from the disappointment of having t leave the city after the Bayou Classic,” the Chicago resident and former Xavier University student added.
“Some of my boys who moved with their families to places like Atlanta, D.C. and Dallas are a little salty about having to scramble to find hotel rooms to come home for the Bayou Classic or hunker down with family members that still live here,” SU alum Darrell Moorehead told The Louisiana Weekly. “I’m still living here and am only a hop, skip and jump away from all the downtown action.
That action will include the annual Bayou Classic Parade on Thursday, Friday’s Battle of the Bands and Greek Show in the Superdome and the big game Saturday afternoon.
Other events include a Career & College Fair, a High-Tech Challenge, a pre-game Bayou Classic Fam Fest along with a Gospel Brunch and a host of parties, luncheons and class and family reunions.
For more information, visit www.mybayouclassic.com.
“The closest thing I’ve seen to compare to this was the weekend that LSU played Alabama and the Saints played the Rams in the New Orleans,” Mike Alexander, a longtime Bayou Classic fan and New Orleans resident, told The Louisiana Weekly. “But the Alabama game was up the road in Baton Rouge, and that matchup doesn’t have the kind of swag and excitement that the Bayou Classic has. With the Jags and G-Men doing their thing Saturday and the Saints and Dirty Birds battling in the Dome on Turkey Day, it couldn’t possibly get any better.”
This article originally published in the November 19, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
