Black Bowl

The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 20, 2000

For Black Americans, Better Than a Bowl Game

Welch Suggs

"And the home of the brave. ..."

Tremaine Hawkins's rich alto fills the cavernous R.C.A. Dome. Members of a high-school marching band look on impassively from the middle of the football field. As she hits her final note, the fans in the half-full stands start to clap, and the players on the field drop their respectful poses. This seems like a routine, if skilled, performance of the national anthem.

But Ms. Hawkins isn't done yet:

"Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, Let us march on til victory is won."

She hits that last note and belts it out. It's an electric moment, and the crowd goes wild. These last two lines of "Lift Every Voice and Sing," known as the African-American national anthem, underline the fact that for those here on a cold October afternoon, this isn't just any game.

The Coca-Cola Circle City Classic, matching Florida A&M University and Grambling State University, has all the commercial trappings of a bowl game. But it also has the festive atmosphere of the Black College Reunion, in Daytona Beach, Fla. It's a celebration of black culture as well as a concatenation of networking opportunities, reunions, concerts, parades, and corporate events.

Now promoters across the country are trying to replicate this environment with dozens of smaller events they call "classics." The Circle City Classic and other mainstays of the black-college sports schedule can be significant moneymakers for these athletics programs. But some colleges are being left in the lurch by promoters of newer events, who don't come through with the money they promise.

These classics have no parallel outside historically black colleges. They are regular-season contests, not bowl games. They aren't really long-standing rivalries, like the annual "Red River Shootout" between the Universities of Texas and Oklahoma, being played the same weekend in Dallas. Grambling and FAMU (pronounced "FAM-yoo" by most people here) do not normally play each other over the course of a season. And they are not regular stops on anyone's schedule, like the Georgia-Florida game -- "the World's Largest Cocktail Party" -- every year in Jacksonville; in the Circle City Classic and most others, different teams participate each year.

And the crowd is not what you'd see at practically any of the hundreds of other college football games across the country this weekend. For one thing, it's 99 percent African-American. For another, the fans are far less loutish than those of most major-college football teams.

"At, say, Florida-Florida State, every body would be tailgating and they'd get blasted," observes Howie Evans, who is covering this game for the New York Amsterdam News, a newspaper written for a primarily black audience. "Then they'd go in the stands and get blasted."

Here, though, there are as many teenagers and younger children as college students and young professionals. And plenty of older couples, too. There are people here from all walks of life, most of them dressed to the nines and ready for a good time.

"It takes on a festival-type atmosphere," says Albert Dennis, Grambling's athletics director. "It becomes a fashion show for the fans. People come out and spend a lot of money to get their outfits together for that game."

And for those fans, this game represents something entirely different from one between teams from predominantly white institutions.

"It's the sense of community," says Daphne King, who has driven from Muskegon, Mich., with two sorority sisters for the weekend. "We're from western Michigan, and there aren't a lot of black people there. This is something positive."

Her friend Carla Turner adds, "It's something we can do without going way down South, where these schools are located."

Neither woman has any connection with Grambling or Florida A&M, or even with a historically black college; Ms. King went to Michigan State University and Ms. Turner to Grand Valley State University. But this weekend's events and even the game don't have much to do with one's alma mater.

People show up from throughout the Midwest and elsewhere for the festivities, which take place throughout the preceding week and the weekend itself. The Circle City calendar lists 27 official events, starting with a high-school beauty pageant on the Sunday before the game, continuing with a college fair for historically black institutions on Thursday, and culminating on Friday and Saturday with a black-tie gala, a comedy show, concerts featuring myriad musical genres, and parties given by seemingly every organization with "black" or "African-American" in its name.

"In Indianapolis, the unofficial program is at least as important as the official program," says Charles Harris, commissioner of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, in which Florida A&M competes. "All of the major, traditional African-American fraternities and sororities will have some kind of major regional activity, along with the national associations of black C.P.A.'s or M.B.A.'s -- they tend to use these events. It's partially educational and partially social."

About 30,000 out-of-towners have descended on Indy for this extravaganza, and the local convention-and-visitors bureau ranks it as the city's second-biggest amateur sporting event this year, behind the Final Four. The 57,808 seats in the R.C.A. Dome are all sold, and a crowd of more than 100,000 gathers on Saturday morning in the compact downtown area to watch a parade with local politicians, high-school bands from all over the country, and the two universities' incomparably funky marching bands. They bob and weave in perfect unison, swinging their instruments to and fro yet blasting a wall of sound in near-perfect harmony.

At first glance, it's difficult to see how a football game between historically black colleges could become such a huge event in Indianapolis. There are no such colleges in the state; the only predominantly black institution is Martin University.

But, beginning in 1984, the classic tapped into an unexpected hunger for an event catering specifically to an African-American audience. That year, more than 40,000 people showed up to watch Mississippi Valley State University, with its star receiver Jerry Rice, upset Grambling.

"People said we'd never pull this off," recalls Joseph Slash, executive coordinator of the event. "But it gives us something that all of the city of Indianapolis participates in."

The Circle City event is one of 44 "classics" being played this fall. They have sprouted all over the South and Midwest; one game this year, the Conch Bowl Classic, was even contested in the Bahamas. Bethune-Cookman College beat Morgan State University 42-6 in that one, before a crowd of just 4,259 -- not surprising, considering that there are usually more hurricanes than football games most Septembers in the Caribbean.

Teams like Florida A&M and Grambling command appearance fees of up to $250,000 from the Circle City event, as would other prominent colleges, like Howard University and Alcorn State University, both Circle City competitors in recent years.

But small turnouts at supposedly big games can mean trouble for participating colleges. Bethune-Cookman and Morgan State won't make any money from their Bahamas trip with 4,000 fans in the stands, and other teams in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference have had problems in the past with classics, Mr. Harris says.

"Sometimes you've got a promoter who will promise you X amount of dollars to come, but then they say, 'Why don't you go ahead and make all of your travel arrangements, and we'll reimburse you?'" he says, refusing to name names. "You get there only to find you're working with someone with a cell phone and a briefcase."

To protect against such problems, Mr. Dennis, Grambling's athletics director, says that for a new event, the institution never pays expenses out of pocket. Any new promoter who wants to have the Tigers must pick up the entire bill from the outset.

A guaranteed fee of as little as $50,000 -- or a $50,000 loss on a trip -- can mean a lot to these institutions. Only five historically black colleges reported earning a profit on football in 1998-99, according to their Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act reports, and none netted more than Florida A&M's $770,000. By comparison, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville made a profit of nearly $16-million on its football team that year.

Although Grambling picks up the tab for some of the expenses associated with the Circle City game, Mr. Dennis says the $250,000 guarantee is the biggest the university will get, even though it pays for most of its expenses out of that money. A classic played in Shreveport, La., last year was worth only about $60,000 to the Tigers after expenses, he says.

The Circle City Classic "means a considerable amount for our university from the standpoint of revenue and the standpoint of exposure," he says. "This game is televised, and it's a sellout, so that exposure will, I think, do good things for the university."

Although most of the players would disagree, the Circle City Classic really isn't about the football game. During a pep rally the day before the game, Mr. Slash, the coordinator, makes a prediction: "Even though it's a sellout, when the game kicks off, the stands are only going to be half-full. People are still going to be outside wandering around, or downtown. But by halftime, they'll all be in their seats."

Not to watch the game, though: At halftime comes the battle of the bands.

Both Grambling and Florida A&M are renowned for their high-stepping, high-toned marching bands, and this year's editions do not disappoint. From the acrobatic drum majors with their towering white bearskins to the piccolo players who march in place and keep time with every part of their bodies even when they're not tooting, the bands make every move with absolute precision. They dance, they rap; the Grambling band even spells out "SHUT UP!" to command the crowd's attention.

Almost all of the attendees of the Circle City Classic's many functions are black, but the event doesn't have an exclusionary atmosphere. It's simply a celebration of a culture that might seem a little foreign to most white Americans.

That distinction resonates with Mason Vandeputte, a junior at F.L. Schlagle High School, in Kansas City, Kan. A saxophone player, he is one of two white members of the school's marching band, which takes its cues from the black-college bands.

"It's a privilege being here," he says. "We get to perform in front of all these people, and it's a lot of fun."

What about being just about the only white person here? He shrugs, as one of his (black) bandmates comes over and puts an arm around him.

"It's just a privilege. It truly is."

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