• The 2022 season kicks off Saturday evening in Prairie View, Texas as the Texas Southern Tigers prepares to face longtime rival Prairie View A&M in the 37th edition of the Labor Day Classic. The Panthers have won 13 of the past 16 Labor Day Classic contests since 2004. Overall, PVAMU has won 15 of the past 18 contests since 2004 and are undefeated against TSU at home.
• Saturday's contest will feature live audio on KTSU 90.9 FM and will be shown live on ESPN+.
• 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 PNC Stadium.
• TSU and PVAMU both featured high-flying offensive units in 2021 as TSU finished second in the SWAC and PVAMU finished third. For the second straight year, the game will feature a pair of quarterbacks who're starting their first Labor Day Classic in TSU's Andrew Body and Prairie View A&M's Trazon Connley.
• For the first time since 2018 at Prairie View A&M and for the classic's first time since 2019, the contest will feature a first-time head coach as Bubba McDowell, a former TSU assistant, will make his head coaching debut.
• This marks the fourth time TSU will play on the Prairie View A&M campus. TSU last played at Prairie View during the spring of 2021. This also marks the first Labor Day Classic affair since 2016 as the 2018 contest was moved to Thanksgiving Weekend and the 2020 contest was moved to the spring of 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• The Tigers feature fourth-year head coach 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 76 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 three losing seasons in his 11 years of collegiate coaching.
• The winner of the TSU-Prairie View A&M contest receives the traveling Nicks-Durley Trophy. Named after legendary head coaches at both schools, the trophy has remained on the PVAMU campus since 2015. TSU holds a 20-16 margin in the classic series (dating back to 1985) while Prairie View has won the past seven games. TSU's last win came in 2014.
