Nothing said Christmas like the Blue-Gray game

According to Samuel L. Jackson on that credit card commercial that has been showing on a continuous loop since Thanksgiving, “nothing says Happy Holidays like a shovel.”

Times have changed since I was a young and impressionable sports fan.

Then, nothing said Happy Holidays like the Blue-Gray Football Classic from Montgomery, Ala. It was a sports holiday tradition that got stuck in your craw like petrified fruitcake.

The Blue-Gray game was one of those college football all-star games that were popular before bowl games began multiplying like jackrabbits, when a combine was something used to harvest grain in Nebraska instead of an NFL scouting jamboree.

You had the Blue-Gray game; the Senior Bowl, which also was played in Alabama; the East-West Shrine Game in the Bay Area; the Hula Bowl in Hawaii.

Here are some things I remember about the Blue-Gray Classic:

■ The uniforms were inspired by the Civil War, rather than Nike.

■ It was first on the calendar, before the bowl games, so most of the players were from one of the following four schools: Indiana, Lehigh, C.W. Post, Grambling.

■ The players would bring extra helmet decals, and they would stick them on their teammates’ helmets. It would look strange to see the headgear of an Indiana player, say quarterback Trent Green, festooned with Lehigh, C.W. Post and Grambling decals. This tradition started later, probably about the time they started showing NASCAR races on TV.

■ A whimsical rule allowing the team that had just scored to receive the ensuing kickoff, provided it still trailed by two touchdowns or some other mutually agreed upon margin. This was supposed to make the Blue-Gray game more exciting.

The thing is it could have been 56-2, and football fans would have kept watching anyway, because this was before NBA triple-headers on Christmas, or “A Christmas Story” marathons on TBS and TNT.

The Blue-Gray game was the only sports programming on TV on Christmas when I was a kid, unless Christmas happened to fall on a Sunday. In that case, the Dolphins and Chiefs might traverse frozen tundra during a playoff game, and Ed Podolak might amass 350 all-purpose yards. And then you might not care about the Blue-Gray game, and that C.W. Post was a small private school on Long Island named for the guy who created Alpha-Bits.

But this is how it usually went on Christmas at our house: Midnight mass, followed by a night of fitful sleep, followed by one of Santa’s elves (aka The Old Man) cussing up a Darren McGavin-like storm when he couldn’t get the slot car track put together like it showed on the box, followed by the opening of presents, followed by a visit from aunts who arrived in their Christmas finery bearing bonus gifts.

(Alas, you could tell from the box it was clothes instead of a G.I. Joe with the kung-fu grip or an Etch A Sketch or a hockey stick.)

Followed by the Blue-Gray Football Classic from Montgomery, Ala.

Turn off the big stereo console. Who wants to listen to the Ray Conniff Singers or Andy Williams banging on about “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” when there’s football on TV?

Las Vegan Alex Shelton was the radio play-by-play broadcaster for the final Blue-Gray game, played in Dothan, Ala., on the Troy University campus in 2003.

When I asked Shelton what he remembered about it, he mentioned the players from Lehigh and C.W. Post, and their NASCAR helmet decal jobs, and spending part of Christmas Eve with the Blue coaches from Marshall. And turning a little blue himself, because he was in Alabama while his wife and two small children were waiting for Santa to arrive with G.I. Joes and Etch A Sketches or their 2003 equivalents.

“I’m sitting at the Embassy Suites in Montgomery, Ala., having dinner with Bob Pruett, and I’m thinking ‘How did I get here, on Christmas?’ ” he said.

The next year, the Blue-Gray Classic became a ghost of Sports Christmas past.

And now nothing says Happy Holidays like a shovel, unless it’s LeBron leading the Cavaliers back to Miami in one of the most anticipated games of the NBA season, which is what the news release said.

The basketball game featuring the pros might be worth checking out, though, at least after the scene in “A Christmas Story” where Flick gets his tongue stuck on the frozen pole.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski