This Saturday, actor, director, and entrepreneur Michael B. Jordan, WME Sports (the sports division of WME, an Endeavor company), Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, and Horizon Sports & Experiences will come together for the Third Annual Invesco QQQ Legacy Classic at Prudential Center in Newark. The classic will feature four historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) competing in a college basketball doubleheader.
The Invesco QQQ Legacy Classic looks to improve on last year’s attendance numbers, which saw 13,451 fans at “the Rock” to watch the game, which will also be televised nationally on TNT. Each of the four teams will participate in a battle of the bands during halftime. Some of the off-the-court events of the Invesco QQQ Legacy Classic will include a welcome party, a kickoff concert, a sports and entertainment summit, an HBCU college fair, and a Legacy Brunch Series with Kevin Durant’s media company the Boardroom, which aims to connect 25 HBCU alumni with 25 senior executives across the sports and entertainment.
The Amsterdam News spoke exclusively with Cecil White of William Morris Endeavor (WME) about the origin of the Invesco QQQ Legacy Classic.
“Honestly, I have to give credit to Michael [B. Jordan] on this one,” said White. “The vision started with him on his couch. You know, it was during the pandemic and he was watching everything happen in real time as we all were with the kind of civil unrest that was happening during the summer of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. I think he was really enamored with the proliferation of black high school athletes, elite level, Black high school athletes that were considering HBCUs as a mode of creating more awareness for HBCUs and almost as their way of participating in the social justice movement. He said how awesome would it be if we created some form of tournament for these HBCUs to get the national spotlight that they deserve and to show these black athletes that they could get similar opportunities at HBCUs that they could at predominantly white schools with regards to exposure. That’s kind of where the idea was born.”
White also shared that the Thurgood Marshall College Fund has been the philanthropic partner of the event since the inaugural event.
He called Jordan the heartbeat of the event.
“He sits at the nucleus of the event,” he said. “There’s nobody with a bigger heart than him, and I think that’s on full display every year. At the event, he’s given hugs to the food vendors who are like his aunts and uncles that he remembers from middle school.”
On the court, both Grambling State (8-12, 5-2 SWAC) and Jackson State (8-12, 4-3 SWAC) will battle for Southwestern Athletic Conference supremacy in the first game at 1 p.m. In the second game, Hampton (4-17) and Howard (9-13) will square off at 4 p.m. Tickets can be purchased via Ticketmaster.