• The 2019 season kicks off this weekend as Texas Southern hosts longtime rival Prairie View A&M in the 35th edition of the Labor Day Classic. The Panthers have won 12 of the past 15 contests since 2004 and are 3-0 at BBVA Stadium.
• Saturday's contest will feature live audio on KTSU 90.9 FM and will be shown tape delayed on ESPNU at 9:30 p.m.
• The Tigers will feature a new head coach in Clarence McKinney. A Houston native, McKinney attended high school across the street at Jack Yates High School and played collegiately at Montana State and the University of Mary. He also served as head coach at Yates before joining the staffs at Houston, Texas A&M and Arizona.
• Clarence McKinney is the 17th head coach in the history of Texas Southern Football. McKinney has a task ahead as the program has only had 28 winning seasons in 73 years of existence and hasn't recorded a winning season since 2000.
• McKinney won as a student at Yates High School and helped the University of Mary post three winning seasons as a student-athlete in college which made school history. As head coach at Yates, McKinney posted a mark of 30-8 over three years before moving on to the collegiate ranks as an assistant. As an assistant at Houston, Texas A&M and Arizona, McKinney has only experienced two losing seasons in his 11 years of collegiate coaching.
• The Labor Day Classic has rotated between both schools since it became a home-and-home affair in 2011. Since 1985, the game has been played at Delmar Stadium, Robertson Stadium, the Astrodome, NRG Stadium, Rice Stadium, Panther Stadium and BBVA Stadium.
• The first Labor Day Classic MVP, Darrel Colbert, is now the Director of Football Operations for Texas Southern.
• The winner of the Labor Day Classic receives the traveling Nicks-Durley Trophy. Named after legendary head coaches at both schools, the trophy has remained on the PVAMU campus since 2014. TSU holds a 20-13 margin in the classic series (dating back to 1985) while Prairie View has won the past four games. TSU's last win came in 2014.
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Courtesy: TSU Athletics