Representatives from Morgan State University and Hampton University traveled to Yankee Stadium for the formal introductory press conference of the 2012 New York Urban League Football Classic. Yankee Stadium will host its first NYUL Classic since 1987, when the game moved from the original home of the Bronx Bombers.

For Morgan State, it will a homecoming of sorts as the Bears will return to the stadium and the classic it helped to popularize in the early 1970′s with Grambling State University. MSU and GSU met in the old Yankee Stadium in 1968, playing in the first black college football game hosted at the stadium.

“So many times when we tell our young men, ‘We’re on our way to New York, we’re going to play in the Urban League,’ you make it halfway there and then you pull off in New Jersey,” said Morgan State head coach Donald Hill-Eley, who is entering his 11th season at the university.

“We’re excited because tradition is back. When you talk about 1968, being a part of something that’s called the first, and now we’ll be a part of something mentioned again at Yankee Stadium, it makes me proud.”

Hampton University Morgan State University New York Urban League Classic