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View Full Version : My Bayou Classic Experience



bluedog
December 19th, 2007, 11:06 PM
My Bayou Classic Experience (http://boxtorow.com/blog/)
November 26th, 2007
I had a wonderful time in at the Bayou Classic and in New Orleans. First off, if you haven’t purchased the new BCFx video game you must do it. I was partly in New Orleans to help promote the game.

This was my first time at the Bayou and my first time in New Orleans in 30 years (I was three when I was last here). Thoroughly enjoyed myself. The food was great, the people were great, the French Quarter was great, everything about the experience was wonderful. The game itself was good. Was it me, and this may sound crazy but was Grambling looking past Southern? I mean they seemed not to play with a whole lot of intensity. And in part I would have to say that was in part coaching. And Grambling head coach Rod Broadway, in his first season, said as much. It was like the Tigers were looking toward the SWAC Championship game against Jackson State in three weeks. And yes this loss will cost Grambling the Black College National Championship, no matter the outcome of their game against Jackson State.

Broadway has been a football coach and around football for a long time. But in looking at him, albeit from the press box, on the sideline and looking at some shots of him on NBC, it seemed that the game was too big for him. I mean he was the head coach at North Carolina Central for five years. Prior to that, he was an assistant at North Carolina, Florida and Duke amongst others. He played at UNC. So he has been in big games. But never a head coach in as big a game as this. The Bayou Classic is big time football, football at its best. A national television audience, a crowd of over 53,000… Big time. Kudos to Pete Richardson, who received a three-year contract extension, and the Jaguars on the victory, but Grambling clearly did not come to play.

Did you know that the economic impact that the Classic had on the State of Louisiana was $200 million? Wow!!! Clearly the biggest HBCU sporting event and one of the biggest college athletic events.

I will be back next year. For sure.