By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on October 22, 2024
An Editorial Opinion
This week, the city of Birmingham, Alabama welcomes Alabama State University and Alabama A&M University to the annual Magic City Classic weekend. Birmingham, which financial website WalletHub ranked last week as the "worst-run city" in Alabama, will host the largest football classic between two historically black universities at Legion Field on Saturday.
At one time, Legion Field was also home to the annual Iron Bowl football game between the University of Alabama and Auburn University. In 1989, Auburn University moved the Iron Bowl to Jordan-Hare Stadium in Auburn in odd numbered years when the Tigers served as the home team.
After its designated Iron Bowl home game at Legion Field in 1998, the University of Alabama followed suit and moved the game to Bryant-Denny Stadium.
In 2004, the Crimson Tide realized that Birmingham did not have the financial means or desire to undertake the expensive structural repairs and upgrades needed to make Legion Field safe. Accordingly, the Crimson Tide moved its few home games from Legion Field to Bryant-Denny Stadium.
The first two SEC Championship Games were played at Legion Field in 1992 and 1993. Then, the SEC ditched Legion Field in favor of the Georgia Dome and Mercedes Benz Stadium.
The World Games 2022 were played in Legion Field and lost $14 million. The city covered this financial loss.
Personally, I have not entered Legion Field since I read confidential structural engineering reports prepared for the city regarding the dangerous condition of the 97-year-old football facility, including structural flaws in the support system for the skyboxes that were hastily added to Legion Field in a hopeless effort to retain a few Alabama home games in the stadium.
Protective Stadium in Birmingham
With $90 million in contributed funding from the city, the Birmingham–Jefferson Civic Center Authority started construction in 2019 on a new $175 million, state-of-the-art, football stadium in downtown Birmingham for the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) football program. The city’s $90 million was taken from neighborhood improvement funds (at the rate of $3 million per year for 30 years) and reallocated to the UAB stadium project. In 2021, UAB football moved into the new 47,000-seat Protective Stadium.
Protective Stadium’s smaller seat size and truncated footprint were designed to discourage its use for the Magic City Classic football game, which draws about 60,000 Black patrons each year. A tailgating area is available at Legion Field, but not at Protective Stadium. An entertainment zone and event hotels are available at Protective Stadium, but not at Legion Field.
The Protective Stadium deal amounted to a de facto, city-sponsored, stadium apartheid arrangement. With the city's blessing, Protective Stadium is basically reserved for White UAB football patrons, while 97-year-old, dilapidated, Legion Field is reserved for Black Magic City Classic patrons.
The violent crime in the vicinity of Legion Field area is sky high when compared to violent crime in the heavily policed area around Protective Stadium.
Today, the only football game played in Legion Field is the Magic City Classic.
Public Safety in Birmingham has Collpased
In 2024, Forbes Magazine ranked Birmingham as the No. 3 most dangerous city in the U.S. The city is emerging as the “Murder Capital of the U.S.,” with three mass shootings since February.
Magic City Classic patrons should be mindful that public safety in Birmingham has collapsed. A week ago, Mayor Randall Woodfin appointed a special crime commission to find solutions for combatting the daily gun-related homicides in his city. This year, Birmingham is on track to break a record with the highest number of gun-related homicides in the city’s history.
Until the crime fighting solutions sought by Mayor Woodfin are found and implemented, Magic City Classic patrons should be prepared to secure their own personal safety in the high crime area surrounding Legion Field.
What is more, skybox ticket attendees must depend on an Act of God to keep themselves safe from the structural defects in that part of Legion Field.
Remember, Birmingham did not become the "worst-run city" in Alabama overnight. Mayor Woodfin and his leadership team in City Hall did a lot of things wrong for a very long time to achieve WalletHub's "worst-run city" ranking.
With all of this in mind, I wish every Magic City Classic patron a good time and the best of luck this weekend!
My sincere hope is that Alabama A&M and Alabama State have jointly undertaken independent public safety measures much like what Major League Baseball did with its Tribute Game in June to provide a safety corridor to and from Legion Field for game patrons. It would be an error in judgment for these two universities to rely solely upon the severely understaffed Birmingham Police department for adequate game-day protection.
Birmingham’s corporate community and UAB convinced the city of Birmingham’s predominantly Black government that it was a bad idea to demolish Legion Field and build a new stadium and surrounding entertainment district on and around the site as part of a larger effort to revitalize Birmingham’s Westside neighborhoods. So, the city took $90 million of neighborhood improvement money and gave it to the group that built Protective Stadium downtown.
The Magic City Classic cannot be played in Protective Stadium because it was designed in a way to make sure the Classic did not happen in that stadium. Meanwhile, the Classic continues to be played in a structurally dilapidated, unsafe, 97-year-old stadium in a deteriorating part of Birmingham.