'It's not just a football game'

• By ALLEN M. JOHNSON JR.
• Advocate New Orleans bureau
• Published: Nov 26, 2008 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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NEW ORLEANS — They’re coming.

An estimated 200,000 football fans are expected to pour into the city later this week for the 35th annual State Farm Bayou Classic in the Louisiana Superdome.

After two days of festivities, Grambling State and Southern University will face off Saturday for what New Orleans Gambit Weekly newspaper calls “the Harvard/Yale game of historically black colleges.”

“It’s not just a football game,” Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu said of the classic at a “kickoff” news conference Tuesday at the Superdome. “It’s not just a tourist attraction. It’s a cultural event. It’s a family reunion.”

State and local estimates project the Classic will pump up to $200 million into the city’s economy.

“We’re ready,” Mayor Ray Nagin said, confidently. “We’ve got it down to a science.”

Behind the hype is a history.

The nation’s “party destination” is working to overcome past allegations of racial bias, rough police treatment and excessive hotel rates.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, some French Quarter restaurants and businesses closed during the classic, arousing suspicions of racism.

Most of the serious recent complaints pre-date Hurricane Katrina, which flooded the city in 2005. After a one-year hiatus to Houston, the Classic returned in 2006. A high-ranking classic official took offense when a hotel required game-guests to wear wrist bands, press clips show.

However, a Southern alumnus this week said he recalled the hotel practice as a sensible safeguard to protect Classic guests and their property.

This week, interviews revealed an ad hoc alliance of civil-rights activists, police, French Quarter business owners, tourism leaders, bar owners and government officials — all striving to keep the Bayou Classic weekend safe and hassle-free.

Born of a Sugar Bowl weekend tragedy in 2004, the unlikely amalgamation of local hosts seems focused on ensuring that the only major “confrontation” during the Bayou Classic is the signature “Battle of the Bands” on Friday.