King Cotton Holiday Classic

The King Cotton Holiday Classic is an invitational high school basketball tournament played annually in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) at the Pine Bluff Convention Center during the last week of December.

The Classic’s history covers two distinct periods, beginning with an initial run from 1983 to 1999. After a hiatus of almost two decades, the Classic was revived in 2018. By 2024, the Classic had brought teams from seventeen states and the District of Columbia to Pine Bluff, as well as national sports media and dozens of major college coaches.

The Classic was the creation of Pine Bluff banker Travis Creed, who served as tournament director for its first seventeen years. It was born out of Creed’s ambition to re-create a 1929 national high school championship tournament in which his father, Pete Creed of Camden (Ouachita County), had played.

Travis Creed’s recruitment of nationally ranked teams for the Classic proved to be a major factor in its success. During its first decade, two teams winning the Classic’s championship trophy were also recognized as the best team in the nation that year by the final USA Today national high school basketball poll.

By the mid-to-late 1980s, the Classic was drawing national sports media attention to Arkansas every December. In 1987, a live primetime ESPN telecast of a Classic game between Pine Bluff High and Virginia’s Flint Hill Academy represented the first appearance of a regular-season high school basketball game on national television.

In 1989, the Classic was recognized by the New York Times as the best high school holiday tournament in the nation, outranking tournaments played in major cities or nationally renowned resort areas. In 1990, Sports Illustrated called the Classic “a totem of civic pride” in Pine Bluff.

A significant factor in building the Classic’s reputation was the hospitality given to the participating teams by the Pine Bluff community. Not only did the Classic pay all travel expenses for its visiting teams, but each team was assigned one or more local honorary coaches and host families, who often held dinner parties for their teams in their homes.

After the Classic’s initial success, the tournament field was expanded to as large as sixteen teams in some years, which allowed as many as three Arkansas teams to be invited to join Pine Bluff High, the permanent host team. The attraction of Arkansas state championship contenders competing against nationally ranked opponents pushed the Classic’s estimated attendance to as high as 6,500 for individual nightly sessions, further setting the tournament apart from others played in smaller traditional high school facilities. In 1989, Parkview High School in Little Rock (Pulaski County) became the first Arkansas school to win a Classic championship trophy.

The 1991 Classic championship game, featuring Russellville High and future Arkansas Razorbacks star Corliss Williamson against a California team led by future NBA star Jason Kidd, drew an estimated attendance of 7,600, exceeding the Pine Bluff Convention Center’s official seating capacity.

The extensive national publicity attracted by the first iteration of the Classic may also have led to its demise, by inspiring the creation of a multitude of new competing holiday tournaments backed with national corporate sponsorships and played in major cities or world-class resort destinations. By the late 1990s, it became increasingly difficult to attract top-quality teams and draw sufficient attendance to keep the Classic financially viable. After the 1999 Classic, the tournament was discontinued.

In September 2018, it was announced that the Classic would return that December with eight teams, including two from Arkansas. Go Forward Pine Bluff, a publicly funded nonprofit organization, led the effort to revive the Classic, with Pine Bluff Parks and Recreation director Samuel Glover as tournament director. Classic founder Travis Creed served as a consultant to the effort to revive the Classic and spoke at the press conference announcing its return.

Reviving the Classic was a long-time goal of Glover, who reportedly stated that he had discussed the prospect of reviving the Classic with Creed as early as 2009. In 2019, with the addition of Simmons Bank as title sponsor, the Classic expanded to twelve teams. After the COVID-19 pandemic caused cancellation of the 2020 tournament, the Classic returned in 2021 with a sixteen-team field, which was continued in 2022 and 2023. In 2023, the Classic attracted a new title sponsor, Central Moloney, a Pine Bluff manufacturer of electrical transformers. Simmons Bank continued to hold a major sponsorship role.

The Classic has struggled to return to the levels seen in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with total attendance for all the games in the 2022 Classic announced as 10,000. However, the Classic continues to be recognized for drawing high school basketball talent despite the continued increase in the number of national and regional holiday tournaments.

The 2023 Classic field included two local teams—Pine Bluff and White Hall (Jefferson County)—as well as three from central Arkansas. Out-of-state teams included eleven schools from seven states, including California, Florida, and Pennsylvania, as well as a team from Washington DC.

While ESPN long ago replaced high school basketball with college football bowl games and major college basketball during the December holiday week, all Classic games are now made available for viewing at home through a subscription Internet streaming service.

For additional information:
Gladden, Alex. “PB Hopes King Cotton Classic Again Puts City on Map.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, November 11, 2018, pp. 1A, 8A. Online at https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2018/nov/11/pb-hopes-king-cotton-again-puts-city-on/ (accessed May 22, 2024).

King Cotton Classic Tournament. https://www.kingcottonclassic.org/ (accessed May 22, 2024).

Murrell, I. C. “King Cotton Tourney’s Fate Murky after 2023.” Pine Bluff Commercial, June 25, 2023, pp. 1, 3. Online at https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2023/jun/25/king-cotton-tourneys-fate-murky-after-2023/ (accessed May 22, 2024).

Nelson, Rex. “King Cotton Returns.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, December 2, 2018, p. 4H. Online at https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2018/dec/02/king-cotton-returns-20181202/ (accessed May 22, 2024).

Parker, Suzi. “King Cotton Tourney Has a Rich and Storied History.” Pine Bluff Commercial, December 27, 2022, pp. 1, 2. Online at https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2022/dec/27/king-cotton-tourney-has-a-rich-and-storied-history/ (accessed May 22, 2024).

Taylor, Erick. “The King Is Back.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, December 28, 2018, pp. 1C, 4C. Online at https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2018/dec/28/the-king-is-back-20181228/ (accessed May 22, 2024).

Steve Wade
Little Rock, Arkansas