10 years after its debut, Celebration Bowl has become a Black college football benchmark

For a decade, former Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) commissioner Dennis Thomas pushed for an idea many saw as too risky and too different: He proposed abandoning the conference’s automatic qualifier in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) playoffs to create a nationally televised historically Black college football national championship game featuring the MEAC and Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) champions.

After watching the successful launch of the MEAC/SWAC Challenge to start the 2005 football season, Thomas pitched the idea because he knew a nationally televised Division I HBCU bowl game would give the institutions another revenue stream, more exposure and more branding from all perspectives.

“I just knew that this could really be something that could be advantageous to both conferences, in particular to my conference, the MEAC, so I brought it up every year,” Thomas told Andscape. “In the fifth year, the directors of athletics told me, ‘Commissioner, you bring this up every year, and we’ve told you no every year. So don’t bring it up anymore.’ So next year, you know what I did? I brought it up again.”

According to Thomas, then-SWAC commissioner Duer Sharp agreed with the idea of a bowl game since the SWAC didn’t have an automatic FCS playoff berth because of the timing of the annual Bayou Classic in New Orleans.

Thomas said the turning point to get the MEAC to agree to the inaugural Celebration Bowl, in 2015, was ESPN’s willingness to invest in the vision and its agreement to provide a $1 million payout. The amount was dramatically higher than what MEAC schools earned through the FCS playoffs, and was the decisive factor that finally brought all the conference member institutions on board.

Today, 10 years after its 2015 debut, the Celebration Bowl stands as one of Black college football’s most culturally relevant events, transforming the competitive landscape and proving that Thomas’ vision for creating a national championship game was prescient.

Executive director John Grant was tasked with pulling off the inaugural Celebration Bowl in slightly more than 100 days, turning an ambitious idea into a nationally televised postseason showcase. 

In building the game, he focused on student-athletes, fan experience, and content creation. Grant remembers the controversy of marketing the game as “the Black college national championship” when not all HBCUs are eligible to participate in the bowl. 

“Some people say, well, but it doesn’t include all HBCUs. Well, the College Football Playoff championship doesn’t include all PWIs,” Grant said. “So the fact that there are some schools that are not included, whether they’re Division II or you have schools that are not a part of an HBCU conference, does not take away from the fact that this is a national championship. As a matter of fact, in my opinion, it adds to it.”

Since the inaugural game in 2015, attendance has grown from 35,528 fans to its highest attendance in 2022, with 49,670 fans. The MEAC leads the overall series 6-3 over the SWAC.

When the Celebration Bowl concept was first introduced, longtime South Carolina State head coach Buddy Pough admits he wasn’t sold on it. Pough initially believed that being an HBCU representative in the FCS playoffs was the best reward. But everything changed in 2021, when his Bulldogs delivered one of the most memorable upsets in Celebration Bowl history, defeating Jackson State and then-head coach Deion Sanders.

After starting the season 1-4, Pough said Celebration Bowl aspirations boosted team morale once conference play began.

“What kept us alive and kicking for the whole season, knowing that we had a chance to actually do something special, was having the Celebration Bowl,” Pough said. “So we played for that for the rest of the year. Entering your conference race, if you hadn’t lost but one game, you just think you got a shot, and it motivates. Regardless of what your nonconference record was, you continue to have something to play for.”

After competing in it, Pough said he fully understands the bowl’s value, noting that while the MEAC gave up its automatic FCS playoff bid, other paths remain open, such as when North Carolina Central earned an at-large bid in 2023. 

For decades, Black college football national champions were decided by polls, ballots, and subjectivity. The absence of a true postseason game left room for debate, with several schools claiming a Black college national title. That’s why a Black college national championship game became essential – a single matchup that allowed the MEAC and SWAC champions to settle the title on the field.

“It was the first time that we’d come up with a clear and definite winner,” Pough said. “There’s no argument about who is the [team] given this process. … So last year, when Jackson [State] beat us, we got our butt on the bus and came home – we knew they had won the national championship.”

A decade in, the Celebration Bowl has become the benchmark for success that every SWAC and MEAC coach openly aspires to reach. Delaware State’s DeSean Jackson, Southern’s Marshall Faulk, and Prairie View’s Tremaine Jackson all have pointed to playing in the game as the goal they hoped to accomplish during their tenures as head coaches.

This year’s matchup features South Carolina State versus Prairie View A&M, which is making its first appearance in the bowl. It will be the 10th game in Celebration Bowl history, a milestone Grant said will make it the longest-running HBCU postseason bowl in history, surpassing the Heritage Bowl, which ran from 1991-99. The Celebration Bowl wasn’t played in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Few coaches understand the magnitude of the Celebration Bowl better than former North Carolina A&T head coach Rod Broadway, who competed twice as a head coach. When Thomas, the MEAC commissioner, first approached Broadway about the idea, he was immediately on board.  

Broadway, who had head-coaching experience in both Division I HBCU conferences, describes his team’s participation and victory in the first Celebration Bowl as a beautiful experience that convinced his team that playing in it was the right move for the MEAC, of which A&T was a member at the time.

When A&T failed to reach the championship game in 2016, Broadway recalls calling his athletic director to tell him playoffs were a consolation prize.

“It was a major disappointment,” Broadway said. “[Playoffs] was second tier from where I’m standing. … National championship, you made a million dollars. Now you go to the playoffs and lose money. It didn’t make business sense to me.”

Despite being out of the MEAC since 2021, the Aggies still have made the most Celebration Bowl appearances (2015, 2017, 2018, 2019) and won the most Celebration Bowl titles (four). Broadway said those championships impacted the Aggies’ overall enrollment and recruiting efforts. Pough agreed: Winning helped with recruiting in the conference.

With the SWAC on a two-game winning streak in the game, commissioner Charles McClelland said he also has seen the conference’s talent elevated.

“I think the Southwestern Athletic Conference has put a greater level of emphasis on what we need to do to surround our teams in order to be competitive for that ball game,” McClelland said. “It takes a lot to get to that game, and it takes a lot in order to emerge as a SWAC champion. And then you have to turn around and now prepare for the Celebration Bowl. So you have to build those teams in order to be able to withstand what it takes.”

As the first woman to ever lead the MEAC, commissioner Sonja Stills has spent her tenure providing research on why the conference should participate in the Celebration Bowl. Now in her fourth full year as commissioner, Stills said she recognizes its importance in helping the conference push forward in the evolving world of college realignment. 

“I think the most important thing is being able to show the world the HBCU product that we have, and we’re able to do that on such a national platform,” Stills said. “The push upwards for the conference and the more visibility that we receive by playing this game on [ABC], that’s tremendous. … You’re not going to be able to push the conference forward if you still continue to do things the same way all the time. 

“You’ve got to be able to move and find more revenue for institutions, and what greater way to do that than to participate in a bowl game?”

While matchups such as the Bayou Classic and Aggie-Eagle Classic carry deep cultural significance and tradition, Stills said the atmosphere of the Celebration Bowl sets it apart. 

“It’s all the MEAC nation and all the SWAC nation coming together in this one magnificent event. It’s been so tremendous because of the buy-in from everybody,” Stills said. “It doesn’t matter who’s playing, we’re coming to the Celebration Bowl. … You walk around the facility and see alumni from different institutions because we’re all together as one big family just to see who’s going to come out on top.”

Both Stills and McClelland point to the Celebration Bowl as a turning point for their respective member institutions, affirming that the game has elevated recruiting pipelines, boosted national visibility, and brought meaningful financial returns to HBCU football programs. The game’s $1 million payout has become a major incentive, allowing schools to reinvest in staffing, facilities, and student-athlete support. 

Stills and McClelland share similar hopes for the future of the game, including drawing even more corporate partners, but both commissioners believe its growth is only just beginning.

“We’ve had great attendance, but I see no reason for the Mercedes-Benz Stadium to have a seat available,” McClelland said. “I think the No. 1 priority for me is to fill that stadium up so we could have that increased energy, which ultimately will generate additional resources for our member institutions.”

He said the magnitude of the event reached a new benchmark when NFL commissioner Roger Goodell came for the 2022 championship game. Grant, the game’s executive director, has long described it as “the Super Bowl of HBCUs,” a comparison Goodell affirmed after witnessing the atmosphere firsthand.

Grant is committed to enhancing the Celebration Bowl each year.

“For someone who runs one of the biggest sporting events in the world to look and say, ‘I can see that’ told me that we are on the right trajectory,” Grant said of Goodell. “You know, 25, 30 to 40 years from now, when we’re celebrating the Celebration Bowl, that is going to be a spectacle, not just for us, but for football. … The Super Bowl wasn’t always what it is today, and the Celebration Bowl isn’t what it is going to be tomorrow.”

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