Red River State Fair Classic


The Red River State Fair Classic is an American college football game played annually in Shreveport, Louisiana, at Independence Stadium during the State Fair of Louisiana. It traces its historical lineage from a series of 160 games played over the 106 football seasons between 1911 and 2016. By having first paired historically black colleges and universities in 1922, the contest holds the distinction of being the oldest annual black college football classic, edging out the Turkey Day Classic by two years and the similar Texas State Fair Classic by three years. Also, so far, the earliest documented use of the term "classic" as part of an annual black college football game's formal name has been dated to the 1927 Louisiana State Fair Classic.

State Fair Classic history

The fair began in 1906, and attempts were made immediately to schedule a football game as a draw, specifically a game between Louisiana State University and the Shreveport Athletic Club. Although plans for that game fell through, the fair did begin hosting college football games regularly starting in 1911. Nearby schools Louisiana Tech and Northwestern State played in that first game. The annual Arkansas–LSU game was made its main draw two years later, much like the Red River Showdown game had begun headlining the State Fair of Texas in Dallas in 1912. The 1924 game featured a silver football trophy as part of the dedication ceremonies for the new host field, State Fair Stadium.. After LSU won for the seventh straight time in 1936, that series was discontinued, and Louisiana Tech and NSU returned to playing in the featured game. When Louisiana Tech began efforts in the late 1980s to move into the NCAA's Division I-A, NSU began playing Louisiana–Monroe in the game.
In the past sometimes as many as four college games were played over the course of a single fair, although the "Louisiana State Fair Classic" moniker was used interchangeably to describe any of the games, not just the featured game. These games tended to include schools from the Ark-La-Tex area. The hometown school, Centenary College, hosted numerous games over the years. Southwestern Athletic Conference schools were known to play on Monday, in conjunction with the fair's "Negro Day"—although the 1961 Grambling–Prairie View A&M game was overshadowed by a boycott by the Congress of Racial Equality in an effort to encourage improved integration at the fair. Through the years there was considerable cross-over between SWAC teams that played in Louisiana's State Fair Classic and Texas' own State Fair Classic, and the Grambling–Prairie View series itself is now held at the Texas fair. College freshman and high school teams were also known to compete at the fair in its earlier years, including some pre-Louisiana High School Athletic Association era state championship games. In 1934 and 1945 military teams were extended invitations to play; during World War II many colleges—including each of the classic's regular hosts, Centenary, Louisiana Tech, NSU, and Southern—had to discontinue football, while the service teams that appeared in their place helped fill in the gaps on active college teams' schedules and were even included in the Associated Press' college football rankings and bowl games as well.
With the NSU–ULM series returning to on-campus stadiums in 1990, the fair was left without regular tenants and, at times, had to reinvent itself. The Red River Classic—which had long served as an annual, early-season SWAC game for Grambling at Independence Stadium—was moved, in conjunction with the fair, for the 1999 campaign. In 2001 a contest billed as the "Port City Classic–State Fair Game" was hosted by Southern during the fair, but in 2002 the Port City Classic was spun-off separately from the fair and became an early September game instead; the Red River Classic returned to the fair in its place. Louisiana College's newly-revived football program also saw a return to the fair that season, as well as in 2003. Prairie View and Grambling, in addition to competing annually at the Texas state fair, have hosted the most recent Louisiana fair games too. Prairie View hosted a series of four annual games dubbed the "Shreveport Classic" starting in 2010, and Grambling began hosting the newly-named "Red River State Fair Classic" during the 2015 season. The City of Shreveport's government actively worked to revive the classic in 2010 and, through 2016, remained a sponsor despite the fact that the classic's new name dropped its reference to the city and added back its reference to the state fair.
After initially designating its October 28 contest against Texas Southern as its Red River State Fair Classic game when it released its official 2017 schedule, Grambling instead later announced that it would be moved to Grambling to serve as a homecoming game, allowing GSU to play a fourth home game in Eddie Robinson Stadium, which had just undergone a multi-million dollar renovation.

Notable games

A number of games stand out in the series. The 1915 Arkansas–LSU game saw the largest college football crowd in the history of the southwestern U.S. at the time. No college games were played at the fair in 1918; World War I would not come to an end until a week after the fair's final scheduled day. In 1922, the fair broke the color barrier and began hosting African American teams. With the 1924 Arkansas–LSU game being played for a silver football trophy, the series became the first future Southeastern Conference rivalry to feature a trophy. The 1927 Centenary game was moved to Centenary Field to preserve the soggy playing surface for the featured Arkansas–LSU game. In 1936, LSU chose to install Mike I as its first live bengal tiger mascot at the venue, instead of in Baton Rouge. The 1945 series of games was historic in that it featured a rare look at multiple service teams of the era, shortly before they were phased out with the end of World War II. A book by Mark and Jacqueline Scott called Beat TECH! Inside the Louisiana State Fair Football Classics, 1940–42 also covers several prominent Louisiana Tech–NSU games before World War II interrupted the series. In 1968 Bulldog quarterback Terry Bradshaw threw an 82-yard pass to Ken Liberto with 18 seconds remaining to pull out a 42–39 victory over the Demons in what "is generally considered the pinnacle of the State Fair Classic."
Although the annual classic has long provided exhibitions of college football for one the largest markets without any home college team, its local cultural significance may have been eclipsed by the Independence Bowl, judging from the bowl's higher attendance figures. Regardless, in the fifty games between 1959 and 2016, the classic drew 873,609 fans total, for an average of 17,472 per game; this average includes the aforementioned second game of the 1961 fair and the second game of 1975. The largest documented crowd occurred at the 1980 game.

Game results

Appearances by team

TeamAppearancesRecord *
Alabama State10–1
Arkansas239–14–0
Arkansas–Pine Bluff31–2–0
Arkansas Baptist10–1–0
Barksdale Field31–2–0
Baylor10–1–0
Birmingham–Southern10–1–0
Bishop63–3–0
Camp Swift10–1–0
Centenary2310–10–3
Central Oklahoma30–3–0
Chattanooga11–0–0
East Texas Baptist22–0
Grambling State1815–2–1
Henderson State21–0–1
Hendrix11–0–0
Jackson State22–0
Jacksonville State11–0–0
LSU2314–9–0
Louisiana College40–4–0
Louisiana Tech5839–17–2
Loyola Marymount10–1–0
Mississippi State10–0–1
Mississippi Valley State10–1
Morris Brown10–1–0
North Texas22–0–0
Northeast Louisiana41–2–1
Northwestern State6117–41–3
Ole Miss11–0–0
Prairie View A&M73–4–0
Randolph Field **10–1–0
Selman Army Airfield11–0–0
Southern185–12–1
Southwestern Louisiana32–1–0
Stephen F. Austin31–2–0
TCU42–1–1
Tennessee Medical11–0–0
Texas A&M21–1–0
Texas Military11–0–0
Texas Southern10–1
Tuskegee21–1–0
Union 11–0–0
Washington 11–0–0
Wiley2211–9–2
Xavier 20–2–0

Note: *—tie games were eliminated as a possibility with the introduction of overtime in 1996; **—Randolph Field, as a segregated facility, fielded two football teams: the Caucasian "Ramblers" and the African American "Black Ramblers"—the Black Ramblers were the team that competed at the 1945 fair