Friday, October 30, 2009

Magic City Classic Takes Center Stage

Alabama A&M players celebrate their 2008 victory in the Magic City Classic (Photo by Joe Songer/Birmingham News)

Back in the day, the moniker “Football Capital of the South” was appropriate for Legion Field.

The stadium on the west side of Birmingham, just a few miles from downtown, was the site of the Iron Bowl, the annual in-state Civil War battle for braggin’ rights between Alabama and Auburn, for many years.

Alabama played all of its marquee home games, such as USC, Notre Dame, Penn State, and Tennessee at the Old Gray Lady on Graymont. Auburn and Tennessee regularly met each other there. In fact in 1968, there was a doubleheader featuring Auburn against Tennessee and Alabama against LSU that attracted more than 137,000 spectators to Legion Field.

In its infancy, the SEC Championship Game also was played at Legion Field.

As the stadium aged and Auburn and Alabama made modern renovations to their on-campus arenas, the Iron Bowl moved to Auburn’s Jordan-Hare Stadium and Alabama’s Bryant-Denny Stadium almost 20 years ago. Both schools wanted the recruiting advantage of bringing high school prospects to their campus.

After 1993, the SEC Championship Game bolted for the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.

The Alabama High School Athletic Association brought its Super 6 Football Championships to Legion Field in 1996, but beginning this year those games will be played at Alabama and Auburn on a rotating basis.

UAB began a football program to try to fill the void, but Blazers’ football has never really caught on in Birmingham and now is in serious decline.

But there is one game that is still happy to call Legion Field home: the annual Magic City Classic between the Alabama A&M Bulldogs and Alabama State Hornets, the state’s two largest historically black colleges and universities.

It has become a premier event, surpassing the Bayou Classic in Louisiana between Grambling State and Southern as the No. 1 black college classic in the nation. The Alabama Sports Foundation is in charge of running the Magic City Classic and State Farm has signed up this year as the game’s title sponsor through 2011.

The 68th State Farm Magic City Classic presented by Coca-Cola will be played Saturday afternoon.

The A&M-State rivalry is as intense as the Alabama-Auburn rivalry, but it’s more than a game, it’s an event. The battle of the bands, the fashion show, the parade, the parties are all part of what make the Magic City Classic magical.

In 2008, a record crowd of 69,113 watched A&M edge Alabama State 17-16. There also were more than 40,000 individuals tailgating on the grounds of Legion Field who never stepped foot inside the stadium.

A&M coach Anthony Jones was stunned, not by the outcome, but the fan support.

"When I heard the crowd of 69,000 and some change, it blew me away," Jones told the Huntsville Times after the game. "Both teams are in down years (but) the people in Birmingham know, the people at Alabama State know (and) the people at Alabama A&M know. They know when you line up at the Magic City Classic something magical is going to happen. And, if you miss it ... somebody is going to do something they haven't done all year long and for someone to have to tell you about it isn't the same. You can't beat this. It's great to be a part of this. Next year, you're going to have people scaling the wall in Spider-Man suits on trying to get in."

According to the Greater Birmingham Convention & Visitors Bureau, the 2008 game was projected to have a $12.8 million economic impact on the region, ranking it fourth behind only the Talladega Superspeedway's two NASCAR races and the Regions Charity Classic among the region's annual sporting events.

It should be interesting to see what kind of crowd shows up Saturday since the AMP Energy 500 Sprint Cup race events will held this weekend in Talladega.

I don’t think that will stop the A&M and State folks from making their annual journey to Birmingham. In fact, the recreational vehicles have been arriving at Legion Field since Tuesday.

A&M has dominated the rivalry in recent years, winning four consecutively and eight of the past 10. This year's game has added importance because A&M is trying to stay alive in the SWAC Eastern Division race. The Bulldogs (4-3 overall, 1-2 SWAC) trail Alcorn State (2-4, 2-2) and Jackson State (2-5, 2-2) by a half game and cannot afford another conference loss in their quest to return to the SWAC Championship game. Alabama State (4-3, 1-3) is fourth in the division.

Birmingham understands what a jewel it has in the Magic City Classic and what it means to the city. Earlier this year, it extended the city’s contract to host the game through 2014.

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