The Gridiron Classic was the name given to a college football game played between teams from the Pioneer Football League and Northeast Conference (NEC) at the end of the 2006-2009 seasons. These conferences had not previously received bids to the Division I FCS football playoffs (formerly the Division I-AA) tournament.
Previously, the Gridiron Classic was an annual post-season college football all-star game featuring a team representing Florida versus a team from the rest of the United States. It was generally held in mid-January at the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Florida, but for 2004 and 2005 it was played at The Villages Polo Stadium.
On August 19, 2005, Florida Citrus Sports canceled The Villages Gridiron Classic for the year 2006. The organization failed to find a sponsor, after The Villages, a retirement community 60 miles north of Orlando, decided not to renew the annual game at their facility.
The game on December 6, 2008 was televised on the YES Network from University Field in Albany, NY.
Famous quotes containing the word classic:
“That age will be rich indeed when those relics which we call Classics, and the still older and more than classic but even less known Scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively deposited their trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile we may hope to scale heaven at last.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)