- 2009 will mark the 30th Annual Florida Classic football game and weekend.
- The record for attendance at the game is 73,358, set in Orlando in 2003.
- Since 1997, a total of 750,304 fans have watched the Florida Classic in the Florida Citrus Bowl Stadium, an average of 62,525 per year. By comparison, the total attendance for the 17 years prior to Orlando was 765,529, an average of only 45,031. Between Orlando and Tampa, the Classic has drawn 1,444,617 fans.
- The booming crowds in Orlando have helped the Florida Classic usurp the Bayou Classic (Grambling/Southern) as the nation’s largest football game between two Historically Black College/University (HBCU) schools.
- In 2005, the game made its debut on ESPNU and was televised nationally. The 24-hour college sports network broadcasted the game live as part of a multi-year contract with the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) and a commitment to broadcasting HBCU games.
- The 2008 game was televised by ESPN Classic.
- FAMU leads the series 19-10. Since the game has come to Orlando, FAMU has won eight of 12 games against B-CU, though the Wildcats have been victorious in four of the last seven.
The Florida Classic is more than just a football game and more than an in-state rivalry.
It is now the largest football game between two historically Black Colleges in America, surpassing the Bayou Classic between Grambling and Southern in New Orleans and the top attended game in NCAA Division I-AA.
Last year's crowd of 60,712 marked just the second time in nine years that the Classic had not drawn 70,000 or more fans. Since its inception in 1978, the game has now seen over 1.4 million spectators attend the game (1,436,108).
The Florida Classic is born of a rivalry that has had all the angst and intensity of a professional wrestling storyline.
There have been disputes over game sites, disputes that resulted in the series being suspended for two years (1983, 1984), not to mention Bethune-Cookman’s on-field revival to make the series a competitive one in the last few years.
With a centrally-located venue, nationally-regarded programs in both Tallahassee and Daytona Beach, crowds in excess of 70,000 seven of the past eight years, the sky now appears to be the limit for a game, whose fortunes seemed to be on the wane in the mid 1990s.
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