Southern and Grambling ready for Annual Bayou Classic showdown
21st November 2022 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer
The annual Grambling-Southern football clash and its history and tradition are deeply intertwined with social and political forces that have affected HBCUs and their impact on American culture.
The frequent intersection of athletics and activism was never more apparent, and never more tragic, on Nov. 16, 1972.
On that day 50 years ago, law enforcement officials killed two students on Southern University’s Baton Rouge campus as student protests at the university reached a fever pitch. After roughly 2,000 SU students had swelled and surged into a near-riot, alarming the law-enforcement and National Guard forces that had been called in to regain order enough that incendiary devices and tear gas to quell the upheaval.
All year, the student bodies and several HBCUs – including Southern and Grambling – had engaged in protests seeking an end to the lingering social inequities and systemic racism that frequently and negatively impact HBCU education and Black students on campuses across the country, and on Nov. 16, 1972, the protest moved ended in tragedy with the murders of SU students Denver Smith and Leonard Brown.
Immediately after the violence, Southern University, whose campus was mourning the deaths, forfeited that year’s rivalry game. For one year at least, football took a backseat to larger social, economic and political forces.
Now, a half-century later, those connected with Southern, Grambling and the historic, 90-year football rivalry series – called the Bayou Classic and played in New Orleans since 1974 – are preparing to remember and mark that tragedy, but also to celebrate the legacy that the rivalry embodies, on and off the field.
“On this 50th anniversary of those tragic events, with HBCU football in the public spotlight in a way that it hasn’t been in decades, this year’s game is all the more important,” said Tom Aiello, a professor of history and Africana studies Valdosta State University and author of the book, “Bayou Classic: The Grambling-Southern Football Rivalry.”
Kenn Rashad, editor and publisher of HBCU Sports, a website dedicated to covering HBCU athletics across the country, said that in addition to determining pigskin bragging rights in the state of Louisiana, the Bayou Classic brings a great deal of money into the local economy annually and raises the profile of Black education in general.
However, he added, the current political and socio-economic climate of protests and calls for systemic change that has taken hold over the last several years highlights the place the Classic, and HBCU athletics in general, have in American society.
“The Bayou Classic has become more than just an annual rivalry between two Louisiana HBCUs,” Rashad said. “It has become one of the most recognized rivalries of all college sports.
“The event had already established itself as a key economic indicator for the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana,” he added, “but its importance and impact were elevated to new levels when America witnessed the social uprising related to the untimely death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement. The increase in HBCU media coverage can be linked to the decisions high-profile high school student-athletes made when they ultimately decided to play collegiately at HBCUs.”
The resilience of Black education – including HBCU football, especially at Grambling and Southern – in the face of obstacles and challenges is reflected in the way the Louisiana rivalry not only has survived the type of difficulties represented by the 1972 on-campus violence but has also thrived.
Just two years after the tragedy at Southern, the Southern-Grambling rivalry vaulted into national prominence and was crowned as the biggest HBCU football event of the year when it was officially rebranded as the Bayou Classic, played every fall in New Orleans.
Since that landmark development in 1974, the Bayou Classic and its two annual participant football programs have achieved other HBCU football milestones, such as becoming the first HBCU game to be broadcast on national TV. This year the game will once again be shown nationwide on NBC when the Jaguars and Tigers kick off on Saturday.
With such grand exposure, the SU-Grambling series has taken its rightful place alongside the other popular and historic college pigskin rivalries, such as Alabama-Auburn, Michigan-Ohio State and Harvard-Yale.
On top of reigning as the king of Black college football greatness and becoming the annual centerpiece of the HBCU football year, the Bayou Classic annually pumps millions of dollars into the local New Orleans economy and attracts tens, if not hundreds of thousands of fans to the city from all over the country.
Augmenting the longstanding popularity and impact of the Tigers-Jags history is the fact that in recent years, media coverage and national interest in HBCU football, and HBCU education in general, have surged.
Thanks to factors such as Pro Football Hall of Famer Deion Sanders becoming coach of the Jackson State team and bringing that program into national prominence, HBCU teams across the nation are starting to be broadcasting on a wide scale and grabbing national headlines. In addition, the commitment from several blue-chip high-school prospects to HBCU squads has helped show young student-athletes that Black football is a sterling option for their higher education.
Aiello said the recent uptick of public interest in and media coverage of Black football is reflected by the national exposure the Bayou Classic receives. As far as the football rivalry itself goes, he said, when Grambling and Southern crash together in the Superdome every year at Thanksgiving, it provides HBCU with a distinctly Louisiana flair.
“The Bayou Classic has been and still is the most culturally relevant HBCU football game in the nation,” Aiello said. “That is particularly so now, with the SWAC leading the way in a new public interest in football at Historically Black Colleges. From the first game between Grambling and Southern, which took place in 1932, the contest has come to define urban versus rural, north versus south. But despite those real differences and the real rivalry that takes place between the two universities, it is a rivalry built on mutual respect.”
One person who is deeply connected with the Bayou Classic on a personal basis is Marlin Hollins, the assistant athletic director for advancement and marketing at Southern University.
The Jackson, La., native was inspired to attend SU after watching his mother, a non-traditional student who attained a bachelor’s degree from the university, which she used to become a lauded schoolteacher.
Marlin Hollins then himself attended SU from 2008-2012, where he earned bachelor’s degrees in business management and marketing while also becoming involved in numerous student activities, serving in several campus leadership roles and marrying a fellow Southern student.
He then received his juris doctorate from Southern University Law Center in 2015, after which he enjoyed a career in government and nonprofit organizations before returning to his alma mater as an assistant athletic director.
In his current position, Hollins leads marketing, development and community engagement for the athletic department, as well co-leading “name, image and likeness” (NIL) branding. As a result, he’s thrilled with the new national exposure that HBCU has garnered.
Hollins said such media attention and national recognition for HBCU athletics helps to raise the profile of HBCUs, including Southern and Grambling, resulting in new branding, marketing and development partnerships with various other organizations, and it assists with recruiting students, including athletes, to the universities.
“It lets people know what type of excellence goes on on campus,” Hollins said. “It highlights all of that excellence on and off the field.”
In addition to revealing the on-field greatness of HBCU football, the raised profile of Black colleges also helps provide educational and professional support and opportunities to students on the Southern and Grambling campuses, and it draws job recruiters to the universities, a development that helps graduates land better jobs when they leave school.
With those trends, Hollins added, the public at large is starting to learn about HBCU history and tradition, as well as seeing many current pro athletes who attended and excelled at HBCUs. When HBCU players, including those at Grambling and Southern, earn national honors, get drafted by the NFL and play pro ball on Sundays, it can only further reinforce the profile of HBCU football in the public’s eye.
He said it also helps in recruiting blue-chip prospects whose ultimate goal is playing professionally. The Bayou Classic provides players with a national audience for which to shine.
“It shows that you can get there [the big-time] from here,” he said. “It gives exposure to students and their talent on the field, but it also helps them off the field by preparing you for life after football.”
And because of all his ties to Southern and the HBCU experience, “Bayou Classic is a second homecoming,” Hollins said.
“It’s for the culture, the Southern University and Grambling culture; The Louisiana culture; The HBCU and Southern culture; The Black culture. It’s for everyone to see the tradition, pride and excellence we represent across the world. Bayou Classic in New Orleans is a family reunion.”
This article originally published in the November 21, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
