Schools’ stadiums, other venues couldn’t accommodate Classic crowds

BY STEPHANIE R. REDD
FLORIDA COURIER

To some, the Florida Classic – played between the Rattlers of Florida A&M University and the Wildcats of Bethune-Cookman University – is a staple that seems to have been around since the inauguration of the term “Historically Black Colleges and Universities.”

But as the 29th anniversary of the annual family event approaches, it is clear that there was a time in HBCU football when the Florida Classic did not exist.

Jack “Cy” McClairen played for then-Bethune-Cookman College during that pre-Florida Classic time. McClairen, a multiple Hall of Famer and former Pittsburgh Steeler who has been affiliated with B-CU athletics for almost 60 years, is the griot of the athletic history of the Daytona Beach school.

As a student, McClairen earned 12 varsity letters in football, basketball, and track. He coached, basketball, golf and served as athletic director. As head football coach, he was an archrival of FAMU’s coaching legend, the late A.S. “Jake” Gaither. He remembers the two teams’ road to Orlando’s Citrus Bowl.

Before the Classic, there were Classics
“I played for Bethune-Cookman from 1949 to 1953,” McClairen told the Florida Courier. “We had a classic of our own back in the ’40s and ’50s called the ‘Tilt of the Maroon & Gold Classic’ that we played in Tampa. FAMU had their ‘Orange Blossom Classic’ in Miami.’’

McClairen, 77, who is now the senior associate athletic director and assistant golf coach at B-CU, said that though the two teams did not meet in a formal classic setting, FAMU and B-CC still played each other annually as members of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. The atmosphere for those regular season games was fervent and the crowds, he recalled, were significantly large.

Early games drew big crowds
“We outgrew the stadiums on each campus,” he noted. “A lot of the fans couldn’t see the games because neither B-CC nor FAMU’s facilities had enough seating to accommodate all the people.”

Former athletic director Lloyd “Tank” Johnson came on board at Bethune-Cookman in the spring of 1972. He also noted the outpouring of fans at the B-CC-FAMU games.

“In 1972, we played FAMU in Daytona Beach at Memorial Stadium,” Johnson recalled. It seated about 5,000 people.” (No longer in existence, Memorial Stadium was located where the north parking lot of Daytona State College presently stands.) Johnson estimates that there were about 10,000 people in attendance at that game.

1973: ’Cats win in Rattler’s den
In 1973, the teams played at FAMU’s stadium, which held approximately 8,000 people. Johnson said that it was the first time that the Wildcats had beaten the Rattlers in “many, many years,” but that the games between the two rivals still drew large numbers despite the numbers on the scorecards.

“We always had great crowds, no matter the fact that we couldn’t beat them,” he added.

After realizing the full extent of the seating issues with the crowd at the ’72 game, Johnson says he told then FAMU athletic director Hansel Tookes, who died a year ago this month at age 86, that B-CC and FAMU could no longer play at Memorial.

“I told him that we’re going to have to do something different,” Johnson said.

From stadium to Speedway
Johnson’s idea of “something different’’ involved playing the ’74 B-CC-FAMU match-up at the Daytona International Speedway. While discussing the concept with Tookes, Johnson admitted that he had never even been inside the Speedway.

“I heard that (Daytona Beach’s) Father Lopez High School used to play game football games there,” he said. “I didn’t know how they managed to do it, but I was determined to find out.”

Eventually, Johnson indeed found out and the two teams made the Speedway the host si

te of their 1974 meeting. Though Johnson was excited about the idea of holding the game at a bigger venue, the bigger stadium resulted in bigger disappointments.

Seeing the light
“It provided terrible seating,” he recounted. “All the seating was on one side. We made the field up in front of a very shallow stand and the crowd was sitting so far away from the field.”

Nevertheless, Johnson and Tookes saw a light at the end of the tunnel.

“Despite the drawbacks, 25,000 people showed up,” Johnson said. “That game was the first indication of what the matchup between B-CC and FAMU could be. Implicitly, it was the beginning of the thinking for the Florida Classic,” Johnson recalled.

Over the course of the next three years, FAMU and B-CC volleyed back and forth between Florida State University’s Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee and the Florida Citrus Bowl in Orlando. By the time the two teams met in 1977 at Doak Campbell, attendance estimates reached upward of 35,000.

Bayou Classic an inspiration
Inspired by the Bayou Classic played in New Orleans between HBCU powerhouses Grambling University and Southern University, Johnson and Tookes put their heads together.

What they came up with – after two years of extensive planning and thorough talks with former FAMU President Walter L. Smith and former B-CC President Dr. Oswald P. Bronson Sr. – was the Florida Classic. The inaugural game was played in 1978.

“What created the Classic, as it is today, is that we were trying to find some place to accommodate the growing crowd,” Johnson explained. “Moving from place to place was too unstable and it was decided that the two teams needed to do something on a permanent basis.

Empty seats in Tampa Stadium
“We needed to find a stadium that we could contract year in and year out, and the neutral site that was chosen was Tampa Stadium.”

The crowd at that first Classic was said to be approximately 41,000.

“None of us knew how it was going to work out,” Johnson admitted. “We had never played before a crowd like that before. It was a big game.”

After many more games at Tampa Stadium, Johnson became increasingly concerned about the number of empty seats.

“The idea was to play a full house in a stadium and we never accomplished that in Tampa,” he said. “The largest crowd the game drew in Tampa was 55,000 and the stadium held 70,000.”

Another problem was the Tampa political and business leadership’s pronounced lack of hospitality.

Disney World gets involved
Johnson says that he and Tookes’ original idea was to find a more centrally located place to play the Classic and accommodate the crowd.

“We tried to go to Orlando at first, but there were circumstances that did not allow that to happen,” Johnson said.

However, he observed that once cities saw the success of the Florida Classic in Tampa, virtually every municipality wanted to host the game, including Orlando.

“We were finally attractive enough for Walt Disney World to get involved and sponsor the game,” Johnson said. “We felt that move would be conducive to us playing a full stadium.”

1997: Kickoff at Citrus Bowl
After 19 years of calling Tampa Stadium home, both teams made the decision to move to Orlando’s Florida Citrus Bowl in 1997.

McClairen, however, believes that “funny experiences” in Tampa played a significant part in contributing to the game’s move.

“They (Tampa officials) closed the mall down; they cut dances out at the hotels. The game and its patrons underwent traumatic experiences in Tampa,” he recalled.

Johnson did not discuss the alleged impact of the city on the Classic but stood by the issue that the game was meant to be played in front of a sold-out crowd. “Some people think the city is the main reason we left, but it isn’t,” he stated.

The present
According to Floridaclassic.org, overall attendance for the game has surpassed the 1.3-million mark dating back to 1978. Many believe that the Florida Classic is destined for higher heights. However, McClairen’s expectations for the game are more reserved. “The rivalry between FAMU and B-CU grows year by year, but the Classic can’t grow anymore,” he said flatly. “We have to just take it as it is and keep nurturing it.”