Saturday, September 1, 2007

Football fever lures legions to Legion Field


TORAINE NORRIS, Birmingham News staff writer

College, high school contests are big draws


More than 50,000 football fans are expected this weekend at Legion Field over three days packed with the MEAC-SWAC Challenge, the annual Miles College matchup against Tuskegee University and a Birmingham high school doubleheader.

A crowd of 25,000 football fans is expected for today's MEAC-SWAC Challenge, pitting the Southern University Jaguars of the Southwestern Athletic Conference and the Florida A&M University Rattlers of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference.

The game kicks off at 2 p.m. ESPN Classic will broadcast it nationally. The Southern-FAMU rivalry dates to 1941 but this is the first meeting since 2001.

The Challenge will not return to Birmingham next year. A three-year agreement between the city and ESPN Regional to host it ends with today's game.

ESPN officials said Friday they are considering a site within MEAC territory. Birmingham is the home of the SWAC offices.

"We haven't decided at this point, but we are strongly considering a MEAC site," said Tilea Coleman, spokeswoman for ESPN Regional.

Coleman said the plan was to rotate sites between SWAC and MEAC cities when ESPN initiated the Challenge concept.

The MEAC-SWAC Challenge is projected to pump $16 million into Birmingham's economy, said Barry Hoehn, director of convention sales for the Birmingham Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Last year's matchup of Hampton University and Grambling State attracted 19,000 fans to Legion Field and had an economic impact of $12 million to $13 million, Hoehn said.

Hoehn said hundreds of MEAC-SWAC fans have called for information on restaurants and other attractions in the city. "I had to put data on the Web site a month earlier because of the number of phone calls we were getting."

Miles signs for 5 years:

While losing the MEAC-SWAC would be a blow, Legion Field is not without candidates for future Labor Day weekend games.

Miles College, which will host Tuskegee at 6 p.m. Sunday in the first Labor Day Golden Classic, has a five-year deal to play at Legion Field on Labor Day weekend, Miller said. This year's matchup is the first of those games, he said.

There had been talk initially of a college doubleheader on Sunday, with the MEAC-SWAC game preceding the Labor Day Golden Classic. However, Miles officials nixed that idea.

Miller said Legion Field could have handled the doubleheaders, with its artificial turf.

"We're able to do 30 events this year," he said. "We've been able to do a lot of things with the field now that it has got the stability to it with the turf."

Expecting 20,000:

Birmingham city schools officials are hoping the doubleheader Monday will serve as a financial boost to the nine high schools.

"We're trying to come up with a formula where we can use the top teams to market them on a game like this and then we can help ourselves," said George Moore, city schools athletics director.

Moore said the system is projecting a crowd of 20,000 for the Wenonah-Carver and Huffman-Parker matchups at 4 and 7 p.m., respectively. Previous high school games played on the Labor Day weekend have attracted crowds approaching 30,000, Moore said.

Moore said the system would like to play the doubleheader next year.

"The teams may not be the same, but we're going to do it again," he said

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