Marc Hudak brings all-star football back to LI with inaugural National Football Foundation Classic
Team Long Island's helmet is seen at practice for this Saturday's National Football Foundation All-Star Classic at Hofstra. Credit: Newsday/Benjamin Dickson
Thanks to the business connections of Marc Hudak, all-star football is back on Long Island.
On Saturday at Hofstra, the inaugural National Football Foundation (NFF) All-Star Classic will serve as an All-Star football game between Long Island and New York City. It will be the first game of this sort in six years, as the former iteration of an all-star game — known as the Empire Challenge — was ended by the COVID-19 pandemic after 24 years.
The old version was organized and run by the Boomer Esiason Foundation. It had always been in Section XI assistant executive director Pete Bleiberg’s interests to revive the game, but those attempts failed because of a lack of insurance, as well as concerns about helmets and head injuries.
Enter Hudak, a 58-year-old Glen Cove resident and a native of upstate Orchard Park, who is the CEO at Barclay Insurance Brokers. He has a deep-rooted interest in football, going back to his days as the starting center for Ithaca’s 1988 NCAA Division III title team. Now, he is the chairman of the College Football Hall of Fame’s New York City chapter.
“I went to the Boomer game several times and I was totally impressed by it,” Hudak said. “I honestly didn’t know they stopped playing it. I was dumbfounded when they mentioned it to me. Both the Long Island and city coaches wanted it back.”
During the fall, Cardinal Hayes football coach CJ O’Neil put Hudak and Bleiberg in contact with each other, allowing them to put their heads together for a project to bring back the annual all-star game. In tandem, during the fall, Hudak and Bleiberg approached Dr. James Paci of Orlin & Cohen Orthopedic Group, as well as Raymond Nelson, the organization’s Director of Sports Medicine Development.
They were able to get Orlin & Cohen’s support, as the organization became the game’s primary sponsor. It has committed an undisclosed six-figure contribution to make the game possible. Doctors and trainers from the organization will be on the sidelines for the event.
Hudak was able to call on his connections from his work with the NFF, such as Riddell, a helmet company whom he has collaborated with in the past to provide equipment and funding for various projects. He tapped into that connection again, and Riddell agreed to supply uniforms and $989 Axiom helmets to all 100 players selected for the game.
Axiom helmets are custom-fit and use three-dimensional scanning technology to measure impacts to the head, which can help the medical staff detect injuries.
“We’ll have analytics on the sideline that will measure what happened to that young man during the game,” Hudak said. “We’ll be able to make decisions on whether or not they should go back into the game.”
As for the rest of the uniforms, the NFF, who founded the College Football Hall of Fame, wanted to give a nod to the college game. So the uniforms for every year’s game will pay homage to historic college football rivalries. This year, the highlighted rivalry will be Michigan and Ohio State, with the Long Island squad donning Ohio State’s scarlet and gray colors.
After ideas were drafted and negotiations were made during much of the early academic year, Hudak said the NFF All-Star Classic was officially committed to in November, marking the game’s official resurrection. Teams were picked in February. To show appreciation for the game’s previous era, there will be a Most Valuable Player award named after Esiason given to one of the players after the game.
“We had always hoped it would come back, but we never knew,” Bleiberg said. “It’s such a great experience for all of the players who are involved, and the coaches who have volunteered time for the cause have been outstanding. I love doing this; it’s the highlight of my year.”
Mike Anderson is a high school sports reporter who has covered 12 sports so far at Newsday. He was the sports editor of Stony Brook University's campus newspaper for two years.
