| For the first time in 12 years, the North Carolina A&T football team will participate in postseason play. The Aggies, co-champions of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC), will represent the MEAC in the inaugural Celebration Bowl to be played in Atlanta. The game will feature the champion of the MEAC against the champion of the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) in a bowl game to be aired live on ABC, at noon on Saturday, Dec. 19, in the Georgia Dome. The Aggies will face either Alcorn State or Grambling State.
“This is big for our program,” said fifth-year N.C. A&T head coach Rod Broadway. “This is why we do this, to have an opportunity to play in a bowl game. Our guys have done a great job of trying to build this program back from 1-10 and losing 27 in a row,” he said. “When you think about where the program was when we came here and the fact that we’re back-to-back champions of our league and the representative of our league in the first-ever Celebration Bowl five years later – shows how much hard work has been put in by so many people around this university. It also shows how much hard work our players and our coaches have put in. This is a great honor for our outstanding university.”
N.C. A&T (9-2, 7-1 MEAC) finished co-champions in a three-way tie with the Bethune-Cookman Wildcats (9-2, 7-1) and North Carolina Central Eagles (8-3, 7-1). The Aggies won the tiebreaker by virtue of the latest Sagarin rating, which has N.C. A&T ranked 154th. The Wildcats have a 174 rating while the Eagles are 190th.
Grambling State, the SWAC West champion, and Alcorn State, the East champ, will determine the SWAC representative in the SWAC Championship Game in Houston, Texas on Dec. 5. N.C. A&T last played Grambling on Nov. 15, 1997, a 37-35 win at Grambling. The last and only game the Aggies have ever played against Alcorn State was a 16-13 loss to the Braves on Sept. 11, 2004, in Lorman, Miss.
Ticket prices range from $15 to $45, plus applicable taxes and fees and will be on sale on Nov. 30 at the N.C. A&T Ticket Office. A full list of events surrounding the game, including the postgame Battle of the Bands, will be made available on the event’s website within the coming week.
The Celebration Bowl is owned and operated by ESPN Events. For more information, visit www.TheCelebrationBowl.com, and follow the event on Twitter and Facebook. ESPN Events also manages the college football season-opening MEAC/SWAC Challenge presented by Disney, another game that features these two conferences and highlights the traditions of HBCUs.
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