Whether postseason or preseason, one game or two, the Red Carpet Bowl continues to be an annual tradition that officially kicks off the prep football season in Warren County.

This year’s games, which will be played at Vicksburg Memorial Stadium on Friday night, features a team from Memphis and one from the Delta.

Warren Central will kick things off at 6 against Memphis-Kirby. Host Vicksburg High is scheduled to battle Indianola-Gentry 30 minutes after the first game ends.

The latest installment is the continuation of a dream local leaders had more than four decades ago.

A group of Vicksburg businessmen and civic leaders decided before the 1962 season to organize a bowl game. The intent was to provide a benefit game for the city’s needy children. Five men – Gene Allen, former Vicksburg Post sports editor Billy Ray, Travis Vance, Harold Baldwin and Ray Roberts – went to Biloxi to take notes from organizers of the Shrimp Bowl and came back with a working model for their own game.

&#8220Those other bowls went out, but the Shrimp Bowl got stronger,” Allen said. &#8220We went back to Vicksburg and used their formula for a bowl game.”

The 1962 Red Carpet Bowl featured hometown favorite Cooper High beating Columbus Lee 13-6. In the early years the RCB sometimes put outstanding out-of-town teams in the game or used it as a Big 8 playoff game. When the Mississippi High School Activities Association instituted a statewide playoff system in 1981, a first-round playoff game for Vicksburg or Warren Central was used as the RCB.

The Red Carpet Bowl was played at the end of the season until 1992, when the MHSAA changed its rules governing bowl games and classics. The RCB then moved to August and became a countywide kickoff to the football season.

From 1992-95 the RCB was a tripleheader with St. Al, Vicksburg and Warren Central. The tripleheader started at 4 p.m., however, and St. Al – always relegated to the early time slot and the scorching August heat that went with it – eventually dropped out. The RCB is now played as a season-opening doubleheader for Vicksburg and Warren Central. It is the only bowl game still played in Mississippi.

&#8220I didn’t really feel like there would be that much long-range interest in it. We ended up with some people that served as president for three or four years and got things down pat as far as the organization is concerned,” Allen said.

Both Warren Central and Vicksburg won their respective RCB games last season.