City, alumni and fans get ready for the 55th Annual Bayou Classic
25th November 2019 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Reporter
Even way up in Chicago, folks knew something special was beginning in New Orleans.
In November 1974, legendary Chicago Defender sports editor A.S. “Doc” Young had ventured almost 1,000 miles to witness the first edition of the Bayou Classic, a showdown between two of the premier HBCU football programs in the country – Southern University and Grambling State – that for the first time had been developed into a week-long extravaganza in New Orleans.
Young was one of the first national journalists to realize the momentousness of the day – Nov. 23, 1974 – in the history of Black football and in HBCU culture and tradition. It all went down at Tulane Stadium, Young wrote.
“It’s been a long time coming… but gone are the days when Grambling and Southern played before small, student-body sized crowds in rickety campus ‘stadia,’” Young wrote. “Gone are the days when the major communications media ignored their games as if they weren’t being played. Gone are the days when black-college coaches and their players felt they were inferior, gaping in open-mouthed awe as they watched Notre Dame battle USC, Michigan battle Ohio State, or Army battle Navy on network television. The Tigers and the Jaguars know now that they, too, are major league…”
Young’s words turned out to be prophetic. The Bayou Classic has been broadcast on national network TV for decades. Tens of thousands of fans continue to descend upon New Orleans every Thanksgiving for the week-long celebration of African-American higher education and tradition, and the Classic garners several major corporate sponsorships each year.
The Bayou Classic brings tens of millions – if not hundreds of millions – of dollars into the local economy as football fans teem through downtown New Orleans and the French Quarter and jam hotels and restaurants. It’s arguably the highest-profile, most eagerly-awaited annual HBCU gridiron game in the nation, and quite possibly the most important intra-state Louisiana college football rivalry match-up.
The Bayou Classic has become so iconic that it has, well, an icon – in 2018, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted the Classic its own trademarked logo, which one news service described thusly:
“The mark consists of a circular ring logo with pictures of a Tiger and a Jaguar facing each other from opposite sides of the center ring of the logo holding a football in their mouths with the football superimposed over a geographical image of the State of Louisiana with the words ‘SINCE 1974’ centered on the side of the football and the words ‘BAYOU CLASSIC’ centered in the upper ring of the circle and the words ‘GRAMBLING’ and ‘SOUTHERN’ centered in the lower ring on the circle.”
All of which is to say, “It’s totally badass.”
How iconic is the Bayou Classic? In 2016, a writer from New Haven, Conn., wrote about it in a column for his local readers. He came from New England to see the biggest Black college football game of the year, one of nearly 68,000 fans to witness the spectacle.
And the folks in New Haven, as the home of storied Yale University, know a thing or two about rivalries. Yale, of course, is one half of what’s colloquially known around the world as “The Game” – Harvard vs. Yale.
“Just as people get pumped up for the Yale-Harvard football classic, folks down in south Louisiana come together for a rivalry of their own…,” wrote Shahid Abdul-Rahim in the Dec. 5, 2016, New Haven Register.
“It’s called the black Super Bowl of college football and if you haven’t attended the Bayou Classic, you’re missing something incredibly special,” Abdul-Rahim continued.
“For the past 43 years, when you say Bayou Classic, you’re talking more than a football game; it’s a weekend of festivities, showcasing the pride of African-American heritage and the black college football experience.”
Abdul-Rahim, whose family includes several Southern University alumni, also described all the other festivities from the 2016 Bayou Classic week, including the intense, vibrant Greek step show and, of course, the legendary Battle of the Bands, the faceoff between “the Human Jukebox” Southern marching band and its counterpart, the Grambling marching band.
“[A]s the bands marched in, it was truly electrifying – the crowd went into overload,” Abdul-Rahim wrote of the 30,000 cheering fans in the Superdome. “And let me tell you, it was a showdown.”
The Bayou Classic was thus compared to the most hallowed, tradition-laden, mythos-drenched college football rivalry in the country. And the Bayou Classic stood up quite admirably. It always will, too, when it comes to national impact and influence.
“Indeed, the annual clash of the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) rivals isn’t just about what happens on the gridiron,” penned Ebony magazine writer Kimberly Davis in November 2003. “It’s about history. It’s about tradition. It’s about fans, alumni and families putting on their school colors, making bold claims and hoping for the best. It’s about competition – a fight for national bragging rights and the Waterford crystal trophy.”
But for all the Bayou Classic means to the world, it means the world to New Orleans, where the weeklong celebration has become ingrained in the city’s soul, identity and pride. Economically, historically, culturally, spiritually – without the Bayou Classic, autumns in the Big Easy would lose their luster.
“The Bayou Classic has historically been and remains important to the City,” New Orleans City Councilman Joe Giarrusso told The Louisiana Weekly last week. “The annual weekend not only brings in tourism dollars – which helps fund our businesses – but also highlights the cultural aspects and events that make New Orleans unique.
“The Classic showcases the deeply-rooted traditions of two of Louisiana’s finest HBCUs,” he added. “But it also emphasizes the part New Orleans plays in statewide customs, both as a hub for major sporting events and an attractive location for family-friendly weekend festivities.”
The Southern-Grambling football rivalry itself stretches back almost 90 years – the first clash between the storied foes took place on a dusty field in Monroe, La., on Nov. 11, 1932, with the Jags blanking the Tigers, 20-0 – and for many years, its location alternated between Grambling and Scotlandville (the home of Southern).
The clash was shifted to the neutral, metropolitan locale of New Orleans and officially branded as the Bayou Classic in 1974; that’s the year the Chicago Defender’s Doc Young came for a look-see.
In 1991, Classic officials announced a multi-year broadcast contract with NBC, a lucrative deal that brought Black college football into the homes of millions of people who had never before witnessed the spectacle, pageantry and intensity of HBCU pigskin.
“For me, the question isn’t why we’re doing the game this year, but why we haven’t done it before,” then-NBC Sports Executive Vice President Ken Schanzer said in the Atlanta Daily World newspaper. “It’s a unique American institution with terrific history attached to it. My hope is it will be here for a long time.”
Added NBC sideline reporter and former NFL star Ahmad Rashad, “A game of this magnitude is a chance for players to become household names, even those players who will never play in the NFL.”
The series has involved many star players and a few legendary coaches, including Grambling’s Eddie Robin-son and SU’s Ace Mumford. And the rivalry has survived numerous challenges and threats to its existence, including war, administrative upheaval, campus protests, periodic waning attendance and several hurricanes.
On the field, it took Grambling about three decades to catch up to the Jags’ early prowess – the Tigers won only one of the first 13 contests. But now, the overall records between the squads stack up pretty evenly, and as the teams, coaches, bands, steppers, journalists, local officials, alumni and, of course, tens of thousands of fans gather at the Superdome for the 71st showdown between the clubs – and the 46th edition as the formal Bayou Classic in New Orleans – the excitement remains at a fever pitch.
The Bayou Classic has been documented in many media and by many outlets – print, periodical, radio, television, cable, Internet – including several books.
Arguably the most definitive of those tomes is, “Bayou Classic: The Grambling-Southern Football Rivalry,” by Tom Aiello. After chronicling the series through the years and examining the social, cultural, political and economic forces that both influence the Classic and flow from the rivalry, Aiello concludes his book with a personal narrative of his trip to the 2008 edition of the game.
Aiello describes the Classic week and game in detail, and experience that concluded with a visceral sense of community and mutual respect.
“This, at its heart, was the charm of the rivalry – the moral center amid the swirling mass of a blood feud,” he wrote. “… After the contest, all of the players and coaches lined up and shook hands. The rivalry is heated, but it is gilded with the soft veneer of sportsmanship.
“As I left the stadium into a quiet New Orleans night, that sportsmanship was still there. Grambling fans and Southern fans nodded as they walked past each other on the ramps leading from the Superdome. They stopped and shook hands. As they had for the past thirty-five seasons of the Bayou Classic – for the past seventy-six seasons of the rivalry – they would be back next year.”
The Bayou Classic is scheduled for Saturday (Nov. 30) at 4 p.m., preceded in the day by a fan festival and parade, while the Greek show and Battle of the Bands take place Friday (Nov. 29) beginning at 7 p.m.
This article originally published in the November 25, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
