The River City Rivalry is about to become the Red Carpet Bowl.

The Red Carpet Bowl’s organizing committee announced at a meeting Thursday that the annual Vicksburg High vs. Warren Central football rivalry game will be played as the Red Carpet Bowl in 2025 and 2026.

The change means the end — at least for now — of the Red Carpet Bowl’s long-running format of a season-opening doubleheader. Football schedules for 2025 and 2026 have not yet been set, but it is expected the game will be played in September, in the third or fourth week of the season. The 2025 game would be at Warren Central and the 2026 game at Vicksburg, in keeping with the normal site rotation for the match-up.

The agreement is only for the next two seasons and will be re-evaluated before the next MHSAA reclassification cycle begins in 2027.

“Being the Vicksburg-Warren Central game is highlighting the people we want to highlight,” said Kevin Ford, the Red Carpet Bowl committee’s team selection chairman. “That’s why we did the Red Carpet Bowl in the first place. We will just make that game even more special than it was in the past because we’re going to focus on our kids.”

The Red Carpet Bowl was started in 1962 and has been played at a single site as a Week 1 doubleheader since 1992. Weather ranging from thunderstorms to high heat have plagued the game in recent years, however.

In both 2023 and 2024 it was changed from its normal doubleheader format to two games at separate locations because of high temperatures. The heat caused concerns about player safety in the early game that kicked off at 5:30 p.m. Thunderstorms cut one game short and canceled another in 2018, and Vicksburg and Warren Central played each other in 2020 in front of a crowd of only 148 people when the pandemic rearranged the schedule and limited attendance.

Ford said that, after two years, the heat had become an ongoing concern that made the committee wonder about the viability of starting a game at 5:30 p.m. in late August.

Having to alter and duplicate, at the last minute, logistical plans that were months in the making were becoming a burden on the committee’s manpower, Ford said. Attendance was also affected by the uncertainty, which hurt the Red Carpet Bowl’s primary mission of awarding scholarships.

In 2024 the committee disbursed 17 scholarships worth $750 each — a total of $12,700 — to graduating high school seniors in Warren County. The Red Carpet Bowl football game is the main fundraiser for that effort, so ticket sales that fluctuate from year to year raise or lower the number of scholarships awarded.

“You just don’t have any control over the weather. If you have to split the games up into two different schools, your insurance costs go up. Your security costs go up. All your expenses go up when that happens,” Ford said.

“And when it rains, the last time we went and looked at it it was $7,000 less in ticket sales,” he continued. “If we’re going to consistently give away scholarships we don’t have that kind of profit margin to lose and still give away over $12,000 a year in scholarships. It’s about figuring out that path so we can consistently give away money to Vicksburg.”

At the same time, an expected shift in the high school football landscape lent itself to the switch. Vicksburg and Warren Central have been in the same region for the past two years, but will move to different classifications under the MHSAA’s 2025-27 realignment plan.

With Vicksburg moving to Class 5A and Warren Central staying in 6A, Vicksburg Warren School District athletics director James Lewis said partnering with the Red Carpet Bowl made sense for everyone. If the two schools wind up in the same classification and region again in the future, it could lead to another change then.

“The Red Carpet Bowl committee was very transparent about what they wanted to do,” Lewis said. “Of course when there’s anything new you’re going to have apprehension because we don’t have all the angles to it. But as we sat down and listened it’s beneficial to both sides.”

The new partnership will bring financial benefits to both the Red Carpet Bowl and Vicksburg Warren School District.

Previously, the Red Carpet Bowl was treated as a neutral site game even though it was played at Viking Stadium and Memorial Stadium. The RCB committee kept the money from ticket sales and sponsorships, and paid all four teams involved in the game an appearance fee. It also was responsible for some operating expenses like security.

Now, it will be a normal home game for either Vicksburg or Warren Central that is branded as the Red Carpet Bowl. The committee will continue to sell sponsorships and lend its historic name, but the VWSD will keep the gate receipts and handle other expenses as it would for any other game. Vicksburg High and Warren Central will also still receive an appearance fee from the Red Carpet Bowl.

The VWSD gets to keep its most lucrative football game of the year, while the Red Carpet Bowl only has to pay two teams instead of four and greatly reduces its operating costs.

“How they’ve done in the past where they pay teams to come and play, now that money can go back into our schools and our programs. It was a win-win for us,” Lewis said. “They’ll still have their sponsors and do the T-shirt, but the costs will be tremendously cut for the Red Carpet Bowl by doing it this way.”

Although the Red Carpet Bowl is giving up a chunk of money by giving up the gate, Ford said it was more than offset by the amount saved by not having to pay two visiting teams and other expenses. In the long term, he said, that should put the Red Carpet Bowl and its scholarship fund on a stable footing for years to come.

“I want the money to stay in Vicksburg and I want to give out scholarships. We do both with this plan,” Ford said.

This is not the first major change to the Red Carpet Bowl’s format, but rather the latest evolution.

Started in 1962 as a benefit game for Leo Puckett, a Jett High School football player who was paralyzed during a game, the Red Carpet Bowl was a postseason bowl game for its first 20 years. The match-up often, but not always, included a Warren County team.

When the MHSAA installed a statewide playoff system in 1981, the RCB was played as the first home playoff game for either Vicksburg or Warren Central. In 1986, there was no Red Carpet Bowl because neither Warren County school hosted a playoff game before they were eliminated.

The format changed again in 1992, to a tripleheader involving St. Aloysius, Vicksburg and Warren Central. St. Al, which had to play at 3 p.m. two years in a row and on Thursday night another year, soon bowed out and it became a doubleheader in 1996.

That continued, with some occasional tweaks — like the return of a tripleheader in 2014, when Porter’s Chapel Academy played the early game, and the recent struggles with weather and COVID — until 2025.

Lewis said there were too many benefits to everyone not to move Vicksburg’s traditional football showcase into a new era.

“It’s still the Red Carpet Bowl, fans can still come out and participate, and you don’t have all the other issues with the way we have been doing it the past couple of years.” Lewis said. “It’s still going to be the same hoopla, the same festivities, it’s going to be the same event just branded with two schools instead of four and played on that one single night.”