85th Annual E.L.A. Super Bowl

The East L.A. Classic — the “85th annual” battle between Boyle Heights (Roosevelt High School) and East L.A. (Garfield High School) — represents one of the most storied high school football rivalries in the country. The Classic, which serves as the homecoming football game for both schools, attracts generations of alumni to Weingart Stadium.

The event is “the Super Bowl of East L.A.,” as a then-Garfield football player told The Times in 1980.

The room was “a bit tense” Sunday at Stevens Steakhouse in Commerce, where the opposing teams broke bread together at the pregame “Beef Bowl.” That’s according to Boyle Heights Beat reporter Ahiti Juárez, who — full disclosure — is a student at Roosevelt. “Sunday’s annual dinner could only signify the beginning of one thing,” Juárez writes. “Classic Week.”

The intervening days have been dominated by hall decorating, pep rallies, senior events and deep school pride on both campuses.

There are a lot of bragging rights attached to the outcome of this game. Garfield High, which was immortalized in the 1988 movie “Stand and Deliver,” has dominated the rivalry for nearly a decade, winning the last nine Classics. But in the long wash of time, Roosevelt still has the upper hand. The Rough Riders hold a 41-39-6 lead in the series.

The first East L.A. Classic was played in 1925. By 1935, this very paper was already referring to Garfield as Roosevelt’s “ancient enemy of the East Side.” And the rest, as they say, is history. (For those doing the math on 1925 and “85th annual,” you’re correct, it does not add up. The Classic went on a nearly decade-long, World War II-induced hiatus from 1939 to 1948.)

The Dodgers are out and the Lakers are away, noted Roosevelt head coach Aldo Parral at a news conference Wednesday. So, on Friday night, “the focus of the world is going to be on us, two little Mexican schools.”

“At the end of the day, they want to win. We want to win,” Parral said.

The reasons, according to the coach and Roosevelt alum, are very simple: On Friday night after the game, people are going to roll up to King Taco. “Whether you’re wearing blue or red, there’s going to be a lot of smack-talking going on,” he said.

And, after nine long years of Garfield running the show, they want to be the ones doing the smack-talking.

Kickoff is at 7:30 p.m. in Weingart Stadium on the East Los Angeles College campus.

However, Friday’s homecoming game for both schools is more than a battle to see who runs LA, it carries strong league and playoff implications as well.

Both the Roosevelt Riders and the Garfield Bulldogs are coming into the game at 7-2, each riding winning streaks (Garfield six games, Roosevelt five). They are also both undefeated in league games at 5-0, beating their usual opponents South Gate, Bell, Legacy, South East, and Hungtington Park.

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Led by second-year coach Aldo Parral, the Riders will look to end their nine-year losing drought. As an alumni himself, Coach Parral said it feels like an “eternity” since Roosevelt last won the Classic. The Bulldogs, led on the other hand by Lorenzo Hernández, will look to keep their rivalry streak going, and cap off their season with another league championship.

“For the fans it’s bragging rights and water cooler talk, but for Lorenzo and us, we have a league title on the line,” said the Rider’s Parral at a Wednesday press conference at ELAC’s Weingart Stadium, where the Classic is to be played.

“This is the way it should be every year, and there is no reason why both Roosevelt and Garfield should not be playing for a league title every year,” he added.

Winning Friday‘s game will not only give Garfield its 10th league championship in a row, it would also guarantee a spot in the Open Division playoffs. For the Riders, winning the game would put them in contention for a high-ranked seed in the Division 1 playoffs, and allow them to claim the throne to the league for the first time in 10 years.

[L.A. Times/Pulso de Boyle Heights]