Throughout its 62-year existence, the Red Carpet Bowl has always managed to adapt to the times to survive.

Early on, it was a postseason bowl game that included teams from around the state. Six of the first eight games did not even include a team from Warren County.

When the state playoffs began in 1981 and bowl games went extinct, it was played as the first home playoff game for either Vicksburg High or Warren Central.

Since those teams were playoff regulars in that era it was almost a given that one or the other would host a playoff game in the first or second round. That plan blew up in 1986, when neither did, and the Red Carpet Bowl took a year off.

In 1992 a new era began when it adopted a double- and tripleheader format to open the season.

All of which brings us to the latest evolution. In 2025 and 2026, the Vicksburg vs. Warren Central rivalry game will be branded as the Red Carpet Bowl. It will not be the opener, but rather a Week 3 or 4 contest.

The change, announced Thursday, is something the Red Carpet Bowl organizing committee has been considering for months. A multiple-year run of bad luck created unprecedented challenges in the logistics of staging the game.

Thunderstorms forced the cancellation of one whole game and half of another in 2018. COVID turned the 2020 doubleheader into a single game with a limited crowd. Extreme heat in 2023 and 2024 forced the committee to back up start times and play games at two sites instead of one, with only a few days to prepare.

If you’ve ever had to adjust last-minute travel plans, imagine having to change a flight on 20 different airlines and you can get an idea of the headaches the committee has dealt with on a regular basis over the past six years.

“You can’t predict the weather. We talk about the heat, but you’re also dealing with storms and lightning and all that stuff as well. Now you’re bumping that game back a couple of weeks. We can play it before region play starts and maybe have cooler temperatures,” Vicksburg Warren School District athletics director James Lewis said. “It was the Red Carpet Bowl’s idea, and we support it.”

There were other things that played into it as well, from the increasing difficulty of finding suitable opponents to making sure the game and its scholarship fund is financially stable for years to come. This new plan takes care of most of the long-term concerns.

Although the match-up is only for the next two seasons — at least for now — it’s more a branding agreement than the traditional two-year game contracts the Red Carpet Bowl has used.

The RCB will still sell sponsorships and pay the participating schools an appearance fee, but only has to write two checks instead of four.

The VWSD, meanwhile, keeps the ticket sales from its biggest game of the season. More of the money is kept in Vicksburg.

The Red Carpet Bowl is a non-profit organization that provides about a dozen $1,000 scholarships each year to graduating high school seniors in Warren County. The more money it has in its coffers, the more scholarships it can award, and committee member Kevin Ford said that is the plan.

“For the Red Carpet Bowl and the school district, both of us will be able to make our monies work better and be more consistent moving forward — to the good of both programs,” said Ford, the Red Carpet Bowl committee’s team selection chairman.

The Red Carpet Bowl has been a Vicksburg institution for 62 years. For the last 32, having it kick off the high school football season in late August has become its own tradition within a tradition.

Times change, though. Thankfully, the Red Carpet Bowl has always been blessed with some forward thinkers who can look down the road and see what’s coming. The latest adjustments aren’t spoiling a tradition, they’re evolving it and making sure it stays alive for generations to come.

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Ernest Bowker is the sports editor of The Vicksburg Post. He can be reached at ernest.bowker@vicksburgpost.com