Blue-Gray Football Classic

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The Blue-Gray Football Classic was an annual American college football all-star game held in Alabama in December. It was begun in 1938 and held each year through 2001 at the Crampton Bowl in Montgomery, Alabama. The game was not contested in 2002 and was subsequently revived in 2003 in Troy, Alabama. However, the game was discontinued because it lacked a major sponsor after that year.

The format, unsurprisingly given the Classic's name, pitted players who attended college in the states of the former Confederacy, the "Grays," who wore white jerseys, against players who attended school in the rest of the country, the "Blues." Both teams wore gray pants.

The game had an interesting and somewhat checkered history. It was traditionally the first major college all-star game of the year. For this reason, it was difficult to get most of the truly big-name collegiate stars, for they were preparing at the same time for bowl games with their regular teams.

In recent years, therefore, most of the players had been players from teams with losing records and from smaller schools which do not play NCAA Division I football. The Classic gave these players an opportunity to be noticed by NFL scouts and others who may not have had the opportunity to observe them previously.

Given its setting, it wasn't surprising that this game was slow to desegregate, and in fact was once removed from the schedule of NBC for this reason. Since then, the game had not only been desegregated, but in the process showcased many African-American stars from smaller, lesser-known schools (including many historically black colleges and universities).

The Classic also made many concessions to make it more television-friendly, such as shortening the first quarter to 12 minutes on at least one occasion to make it fit more easily into a doubleheader package, and changing the rules so that after any score a team down by a double-digit margin will receive the kickoff, even if they in fact were the one which had just scored, presumably to keep the game close and prevent the loss of viewership which often occurs in grossly uneven contests.

In recent years, the game had always been played on Christmas Day, which may have tended to limit the live gate, but which insured that it was on television at a time when many viewers are available for it.

Even in its new setting in Troy on the campus of Troy University's Movie Gallery Stadium, about 50 miles (80 km) east of Montgomery, the Montgomery Lions Club had remained active in the staging of the game, and in fact were instrumental in finding this new venue to replace the aging, and some would say crumbling, Crampton Bowl. In fact, the game's 2002 hiatus was related to two primary factors: the failure to obtain a new corporate sponsor to purchase the game's naming rights after the Kelley-Springfield Tire Co. (a subsidiary of the Goodyear) decided to discontinue its sponsorship, and the declining condition of the Crampton Bowl. It was generally assumed that the Lions and others would have liked to return the game to Montgomery, but did not do so because of deteriorating condition of the Crampton Bowl stadium.

[edit] Trivia

An interesting facet of the game was that players generally were encouraged to bring decals of their respective schools' helmet logos. While this was apparently very amusing for the players, in many instances it made it almost impossible for the casual fan to determine where a player attended school. Many players decorated their helmets, which they brought from their own schools, with many other decals prior to playing in the Classic, making their schools of origin difficult to discern.

A somewhat macabre fact often associated with the game was that it was the site of the last public appearance of the late former Alabama governor Lurleen Wallace prior to her death in office from cancer.