The Shrine Bowl of the Carolinas is a high school football all-star game which dates back to 1937 and has a long history in the Carolinas, especially Charlotte. A fundraising effort for the areas Shriners Hospital, the event pits the best players in North and South Carolina against each other in an effort to settle state scores on state supremacy and get area football players a bit more recruiting visibility against high-level competition. The event is hosted by the Carolinas' six main Shrine Temples: the Oasis Temple (Charlotte) headed the effort, though the Hejaz (Greenville, SC), Omar (Mt. Pleasant, SC), and Sudan (New Bern) Temples all readily joined in to host the first game, and every meeting thereafter. Since its inception, two additional Temples -- Amran (Raleigh) and Jamil (Columbia, SC) -- have opened and also assist in hosting the event, which was inspired by the highly-successful East-West Shrine Bowl, a collegiate all-star game based on the west coast since 1925.

Inspired by the success of the East-West Shrine Bowl, several North and South Carolina Shriners were inspired to organize a similar event. W. H. "Hix" Palmer (who also worked as Charlotte's fire chief, earning him the moniker of Chielf Palmer) and Ernest Sifford, both of the Oasis Temple, are widely credited with spearheading the event in late 1936. When Palmer approached Bob Allen, head coach of Charlotte's Central High School (and eventual inaugural NC Shrine team coach), he was hesitant: previous all-star games he'd been involved with had been unsuccessful. Politely demuring, Allen suggested they talk about it again in the Winter, hoping that would be the end of it. "But about February," Allen recalled, "Chief Palmer was in my office again. He convinved me."

At first, Allen's reticence towards the event was well-founded: the first game struggled to draw a crowd. Bill Isenhour, Jr., an Oasis Shriner instrumental in gathering ticket sales in the early years of the game, remembered, "You just couldn't get people to pay a dollar to go out to that first game. I personally took a bunch of tickets and went to places like Southern Engineering and around cement plants and sold them there.... We didn't do too well until after World War II," Isenhour remembered. "Then ticket sales really blossomed out." He attributed the initial difficulty in selling tickets to the events' lack of cachet [102].

The Shrine Bowl was hosted in Charlotte's American Legion Memorial Stadium from its opening kickoff in 1937 through 2000. It routinely filled or nearly filled Memorial Stadium's approximately 16,000 seat capacity until 1945, when an over-capacity crowd drew as many as 10,000 more spectators than expected -- reports even indicate another 10,000 paying spectators had to be turned away [20]. That capacity was not exceeded for several years, not due to lack of interest, but instead due to a desire on the behalf of the Shriners not to oversell the game, which already drew an average of 5,000 general admission tickets and saw the construction of temporary bleachers to support some of the additional capacity [23].

After years of filling Memorial Stadium to capacity, the Shrine Bowl was at a tipping point in 1953: the number of people interested in attending the Shrine Bowl was consistently well beyond the limits of the 17-year-old stadium. Because of this, tickets to the charitable event were often being sold by scalpers at two- to three-times their face value. Hoping to light a fire under the Charlotte city council to expand the venue's seating, Oasis Shriner Clarence Beeson notified the council that the game could be moved elsewhere, should it become necessary. As the other Temples caught wind of the petition to move the game, the debate spilled into the editorial pages of newspapers across the Carolinas, and created a great deal of infighting among the otherwise-amicable Temples [102]. A handful of years later, the University of South Carolina offered to remedy the site's persistent capacity issues by proffering Williams-Brice Stadium (then still called Carolina Stadium), which would more than double the capacity from 20,000 seats to 43,000 [44]. Eventually, however, it was agreed that for logistical purposes it would be best to keep the game in Charlotte, and the capacity was increased by about 5,000 in 1960 [102]. The logic for keeping it in Charlotte was, in both cases, that the structure and environment of the game already existed and was well established, and upending this without reason would be messing with something that didn't need fixing, given the wildly successful charitable donations the game resulted in regardless of capacity.

Given its popularity, the Shrine Bowl could only be the lone high school all-star game for so long; a number of similar all-star games started to crop up, even in the confines of the state. The Sudan Temple Shriners, for example, started hosting the Sudan Temple Bowl -- sometimes also confusingly referred to as the Shrine Bowl -- in 1948, in addition to their work with the Shrine Bowl of the Carolinas. Initially, the game pitted roughly high school-aged boys from the Oxford and Methodist Orphanages, which the Sudan Shriners supported financially, against each other until 1957, when the game turned collegiate, starting with the Freshman teams of NC State and UNC. (In 1970, after a series of gradual changes to the format, the event was dropped.) The same year as the first Sudan Temple Bowl, South Carolina promoters began organizing the North-South Game (now called the Touchstone Energy Bowl), which features high school stars from the northern and southern portions of the state in competition against each other. The following year, the East-West Game began by similarly-interested North Carolinians. Despite the confluence of high school all-star games in the area, the Shrine Bowl gets first crack at choosing rosters, with each respective intrastate championship game getting second dibs.

Though sometimes touted as the oldest high school football all-star game in the country, that is not entirely true, though the games which preceeded it are few and little-remembered. My research found only six examples of high school all-star games preceeding the Shrine Bowl: a 1928 Louisiana-Arkansas All-Star game organized once in Haynesville, Louisiana [1], a Dallas vs Houston city all-star game which ran on New Years Day from 1930-1934 [2] [3], an Atlanta High School All-Star game in the 1930s [102], an Oregon-Washington State high school all-star game which ran once in 1934 [4], an Eastern vs Western Alabama All-Star game in 1935 [5], and a North-South Texas All-Star game in the late 1930s [6] [7]. Though it is possible additional similar games preceeded the Shrine Bowl, the fact that only two of the above games were played more than once and the dearth of information or coverage on simalar games speaks to their relative rarity.

Though it was not the first high school all-star game, the Shrine Bowl does appear to be the oldest active high school all-star game, narrowly edging out the Oil Bowl (1938) and the Rudy Mumley OVAC Classic (1940). By debuting on December 4th, 1937, it also narrowly beat out a bizarre Florida-vs-Ohio high school all-star game hosted in St. Petersburg in December 23rd. (Dubbed the Kumquat Bowl, it was advertized as "the first North-South high school all-star football game" [8] [9]). Because of Covid cancelations, however, the Shrine Bowl and the Oil Bowl are now tied in the number of meetings at 84 a piece, as of 2022.

After being played on the first Saturday of December from 1937 to 1973 (except in 1939, for reasons unclear, and 1945, to avoid a conflict with the big UNC-Virginia game), the game was moved back a week in order to accomodate South Carolina's expanded high school playoff schedule; apparently, the conflict preceeded the change in date by several years [63]. Just over a decade later, in 1984, there was consternation among the Tar Heel camp after 4 major North Carolina players were unable to participate in a game North Carolina went on to lose 28-34 due to their own state playoffs [64]. The fact is, the problem was nothing new: North Carolina's 1937 team had several players spurn a chance to play due to playoffs, and the playoff issue which arose in 1984 had been plaguing the teams of the Old North State for a decade or two, and was exacerbated by a change in playoff structure of their own. Despite this, the game wasn't pushed to the third Saturday in December until 1993, allowing all of North Carolina's seniors to participate for the first time since 1984.

Though North Carolina's high school football playoffs had overtime systems in place in order to deal with ties by the second decade of the 20th century, these rules did not initially apply to the Shrine Bowl -- just the state playoffs. This was evidenced after the very first Shrine Bowl ended in a scoreless tie. Another three games ended in ties during the first 12 instances of the Shrine Bowl. It's not clear when this changed, but by 1984, the teams had worked out an overtime system, requiring a single overtime in 1984 and two extra periods two years later. Some time before the 2018 season, the teams were again aforded a chance at tying, as the two states tied for the fifth time; again, it is not clear when the rules were ammended.

As with the rest of the South, the Shrine Bowl was slow in integrating its players. Though the Shriners Hospital in Greenville, SC, which the game benefits, has always been integrated (one of the few in either state when it opened in 1927), the slow and fitified method which North and South Carolina high schools integrated hindered the possibility of an integrated game; though some schools had integrated by the early 1960s, North Carolina highschools were not fully integrated until 1970. The game was nearly integrated in 1965, when running back phenom Jimmie Lee Kirkpatrick helped lead the otherwise-white Myers Park high school team to an undefeated season, however, it was a fairly open secret that then-Director of the Shrine Bowl Stan Cropley refused to integrate the game. The official reasoning was explained by Jim Hartman, then-coach of Myers Park, as follows: "The inside information was that a North Carolina coach came around to watch Jimmy [sic] Lee play one day. He noticed that Jimmy [sic] received a pass, he stepped out of bounds instead of taking bodily contact -- something we all do today. But that coach was heard to say that after seeing that move, Jim Kirkpatrick would never play for him." The North Carolina head coach for the season, Clyde Walker, remembered that "the rules prevented us from picking more than two players from any one high school," adding that "Neb Hayden and Mack Tharpe" were chosen instead. "[W]e were solid for Hayden and we needed a fullback and linebacker like Tharpe... But our choice was not based on race or anything of that nature" [102].

Everyone, from football coaches to casual fans, knew Kirkpatrick deserved a spot on the team; as a result of his repudiation, rumors of pickets and protests circulated widely before the game. A 75-man police unit was brought out to safeguard the stadium, though no protests ever fomented. As the issue came to the forefront, Cropley resigned immediately, and nationally-renowned civil rights lawyer Julius Chambers filed a lawsuit. A city judge ruled that the 1965 edition of the Shrine Bowl could go on as intended, but that future editions of the game would have to be integrated. (Within days of the ruling, the homes of Chambers and three other civil rights leaders in Charlotte were bombed. The case remains unsolved) [102] [103]. As promised, the Shrine Bowl was integrated the following year, when Tommy Love (of Sylva, NC) and Titus Ivory (of West Charlotte) played for North Carolina. South Carolina desegregated their Shrine Bowl team the following year with Ernest Jackson (of Hopkins, SC) [102] [104].

When the Shrine Bowl first began in 1937, both teams were limited to 22 players; a decade later, the roster size was increased to 30 players a side. In 1957, the roster was increased to 33, and in 1967 to 35. The roster size stayed pat at 35 for over 3 decades before increasing to 40 prior to the 1997 edition of the game. This began a period of relative instability in terms of roster size, with the roster size increasing to 42 in 1999 before bumping up an additional 5 the following season; after remaining at 47 for 2001, the roster was again increased, this time to 48. This remains the largest the roster has ever been.

This period also marked a heightening of tensions with South Carolina's North-South game. The North-South game was frustrated by the ever-increasing number of players the Shrine Bowl was taking, as well as the repeated delay which faced the release of the Shrine Bowl's roster, since the North-South game traditionally had waited until the Shrine Bowl had released its roster to make selections of their own. Since the game is normally played a week before the Shrine Bowl, the North-South Game got even less time to organize and plan. In December 2002, the North-South Game announced they would make their selections ahead of the Shrine Bowl in 2003, come what may, after the Shrine Bowl waited until the day of the North-South Game's selection announcement to disclose players who had been chosen over a week ago. "I'm not trying to put anyone in a corner," explained longtime North-South Game representative Keith Richardson, "we're just trying to do what's best for our all-star game" [203] [204].

The following February, the two organizations met to flesh out roster size and release rules and "increase cooperation." Part of the agreement was that the Shrine Bowl would limit its roster to 44 players, as well as informing the North-South Game immediately of which players were selected. The Shrine Bowl has held steady at a 44-man roster, except for 2013, when for reasons unclear the squad was dropped to 40 men before being increased back to 44 the following year [102] [107].

Starting with the 1972 Shrine Bowl, both offense and defense were limited to just three base offensive and defensive formations for the first time, apparently at the request of the South Carolina. The justification behind the change was that since the teams were given only a week of dedicated practice to prepare for the game, limiting what offenses and defenses each respectively had to prepare for allowed for more streamlined gameplanning [105]. The coaches from each state agreed beforehand which styles they favored, creating a give-and-take barter system for what to keep and what to cut. The rules can also include limitations on when and how often teams can blitz [102].

An interesting, if inconsequential, factoid is that the Shrine Bowl was never played in the rain from its inception in 1937 until 1964, when a deluge for the ages made up for past pleasantries started right before opening kickoff. In the tempest, halftime festivities were canceled, and the crowd, which numbered about 25,000 at the start of the game, dwindled to about 10,000. Gameday weather remained clement, if cold, for several more years until 1974, when the heavens again opened up. Sportwriter Bob Quincy recapped the 9-0 Sandlapper win, dubbed by some as the Mud Bowl, by noting that "There were no long runs, no long passes, and fortunately, no drownings" [40] [102].

And 1971 was the first game played with snow on the ground after nearly 6.5" fell the night before, though snow was not falling during the game itself [50]. George Sinnicks, who was General Chairman of the Bowl for the first time that December, recalled, "It was not an inspiring sight." After a herculean effort by Shriners and Charlotte city workers, the snow was cleared and a massive tarp laid overtop the freshly-cleared grass. The board did not, however, account for the freshly-cleared snow leaving behind water droplets, which froze the oversize tarp into a solid sheet. The tarp had to be removed with heavy equipment, which marred the field's surface, not to mention the tarp. Nonetheless, the game went on as scheduled [102].

One difficulty in researching the Shrine Bowl is the problem of announced versus actual attendance. Because it's a charity game, the venue used is almost always officially sold out. And though actual attendance reflected this for most of the game's first four decades (minus the occaisional inclement weather), by the 1980s, people would buy tickets to support the game and then never show up. As such, attendance numbers often rely largely on a reporter estimating the crowd size; the few times an actual attendance is given are from a reporter who was at the game deciding to jot down the crowd size at halftime, if the PA crew decided to report it. Due to waning interest, the attendance of several of the most recent games remains unknown as of now.