(But) In 1971 something unusual happened.  It snowed endlessly the day before the game.  Two Inches.  Four inches. Six inches. More.  Charlotte and parts of the Carolinas looked like a giant bedsheet from the air.  You could hardly find the Shrine Bowl stadium in the snow.  
Thousands of football fans were already past the point of no return committed to a weekend of football and frivolity.
George Sinnicks was finishing up his first year as General Chairman.  He thinks back ruefully to the long hours of watching that Friday snow fall.  Today he says, in a masterpiece of understatement, "It wan not an inspiring sight."  Clarence Beeson called an emergency meeting of the top officials of the game late Friday afternoon with Marion Diehl of the Park and Recreation Department.  Many questions were asked:
Should we cancel the first Shrine Bowl game in history?
Can we postpone it and get the players back next week?
If we can go ahead, will we have injured players and spectators?
Can the city clear the snow from the field and the seats?
If we can clear, where do we put all the snow?
Will 20 thousand ticket holders show up?
If we opt to cancel, would we refund all the money and wipe out this year's contribution to the hospital endowment?
Do we have insurance to cover this?
Is there time to do anything constructive?
Who's got the aspirin?
George Sinnicks, Clarence Beeson, Roy Smith, Bill Miller, Marion Diehl and others kicked it back and forth. Diehl stuck his neck out and said, yes, the city could surely clear the snow enough to play the game.  Miller said there was no way the athletes could return to play later on.
it took guts and heroism to sweat through that meeting.  Out of it came the firm decision to play the game.  Word went out by radio to the public, and to the Shrine Bowl workers and teams by phone, that the 35th annual Shrine Bowl game would indeed be played.
Imperial Potentate Victor Thornton was already in Charlotte.  After his honorary party Friday night at the Barringer Hotel, George Sinnicks stepped outside and nearly fell on the slippery snow.  So did countless other Shriners, city workers and volunteers who worked that dark night to make the game happen.
City equipment went to work on the disastrously disabled stadium.  They moved tons of fresh, heavy snow. A $30,000 canvas protected the grassy field.  The idea was that if the snow could be neatly pushed off that canvas, the covering could be rolled back and a fresh lawn would reveal itself to the waiting players.
Well, that isn't precisely what occurred.  The tarpaulin stuck, frozen to the ground.  When the power equipment pushed, it tore chunks of canvas.  A quick and painful decision to sacrifice the canvas led to its destruction and removal with the snow.  Goodbye $30,000.
The field didn't look quite like the Augusta National fairways, either.  But the real ulcer factory was the stands.  Getting that snow removed meant working it one square foot at a time.  Clyde Robinson remembered "working like snow dogs" clearing the stadium seats with shovels they rushed out and bought.  A clever compromise saw the seats left clean but with snow stashed under them.  Spectators were to have the unusual sensation of sitting in the dry, but with cold, wet legs.
Sound cables that were vital to the communications systems had been buried and hidden by the heavy snowfall.  When the snow stopped, communications volunteers set about locating and drying out those cables so they would function by game time Saturday.  They were at it until 3:40 A.M., but they did it.
The show went on.  Perhaps half the ticket holders showed up.  Thousands had started out for the game, then stopped and turned back when they beheld roads laden with snow.
One noble from Burlington, N.C., was holding six tickets when he and his friends started driving, their car filled with food.  By the time they hit Greensboro, the snow was turning the ground --and their faces--white.  Ten miles short of High Point on Interstate 85 they knew they would never see the 1971 Shrine Bowl game.  So they pulled over and parked under an overpass and ate their picnic lunches quietly.
They played a full Shrine Bowl game that first Saturday in December, 1971.  South Carolina won, 3-0.  The cleanup job was a fierce one.
And to think General Chairman Sinnicks had his final worker's meeting just two days before.  The skies had been sunny and bright.  Everyone knew the weather was going to be just fine.