The schools are less than one mile apart and that is the main factor that
makes this one of the most heated rivalries in state history. The teams
share a football stadium and only one railroad track separates them so the
game means a lot each year to both schools.
The two schools first
played in 1927 when the Mignon Tigers and the District State Secondary Agricultural College kicked things off to begin a 73-year-old annual battle to claim their stake for the city championship in the town of Sylacauga.
Eighty-eight years after
that first meeting, the two teams still mark their calendars each fall in
anticipation of the game. Sylacauga leads the series
60-26-4 and has won the last fifteen games in a row. There have been very
few upsets in the series as it seems the team with the best record usually
wins the game.
According to Earl Lewis, sportswriter for Sylacauga Today, the
greatest game between the two schools was played during the 1953 season. The
Aggies scored late to pull out a dramatic 26-20 win after Comer had tied the
game in the fourth quarter.
Like many of the games,
the 1999 Marble City Classic went down to the wire. Sylacauga's Jonathan Reynolds kicked a game-winning 42-yard field goal with :40 seconds remaining, giving the Aggies a thrilling 16-13 win over their cross-town rival at Legion Stadium.
The next season the
Tigers held Sylacauga to 107 years of total offense and fifteen snaps in the
second half to pull out a 12-0 victory. It was their last win through the
2015 season.
This is an very unique
rivalry in the fact that the teams first played in 1927 and have played in
every season since then. That is rare for team to play that many games
without a break at some point in time.
Sadly the series will come to an end in 2016. The major reason is the sizes
of each school. Over the past twenty years Sylacauga High School has
continued to grow while B.B. Comer has seen little movement in enrollment.