The last time the South Carolina State football team took the field was Nov. 23, when they wrapped up their MEAC schedule with a 53-21 win over Norfolk State.
The MEAC champs will face a Jackson State team that beat Southern 41-13 in the SWAC championship game just this past weekend.
A change in the college football postseason schedule thanks to an expansion of the College Football Playoff will impact the Division I HBCU national championship game.
The annual Celebration Bowl now moved from the third Saturday in December to the second weekend. The title game, featuring champions of the SWAC and MEAC, will be played at noon EST on Dec. 14 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta and televised on ABC.
That means Jackson State will have no break between the conference title game and the Celebration Bowl.
Bulldogs head coach Chennis Berry said during Sunday’s Celebration Bowl coaches’ conference that while the MEAC is the smallest FCS conference in terms of teams, the competition keeps everyone sharp—and a little banged up.
“The layoff means absolutely nothing to me, man. We’re going to prepare every day to try to go 1-0,” he said “And, you know, I tell you what the layoff did help us get healthy. But nobody makes excuses or explanations in this game. You gotta line up and make sure your team’s ready to go, but I don’t look at it as an advantage or a disadvantage.”
Berry says the advantage of three weeks in between games isn’t a factor as SCSU prepares for its second Celebration Bowl appearance in school history.
“I’m a firm believer in controlling what’s controllable, so my job is to play the people that’s on our schedule and get our football team ready to go,” Berry said. “We played a really good schedule with some versus really good opponents. And our conference, to me, is a tough conference, and you got an opportunity to see our conference this year; very, very competitive, not only in our conference, but we play teams out of the conference as well.”
The lack of rest between games has long been considered a disadvantage for the SWAC by league stakeholders despite Florida A&M beating Howard in last season’s Celebration Bowl.
SWAC Commissioner Dr. Charles McLelland suggested that inequity in the schedule between the two FCS Black College conferences contributed to the MEAC having the upper hand in the bowl game.
The MEAC, which does not have a conference championship game, holds a 6-2 edge over the SWAC.
“Our not being able to win the Celebration Bowl is a product of our regular season,” McClelland said of the 12-team league where eight games are played per team (five in divisional play, three non-division games). “There are no weeks off, you can’t look ahead, you can’t study who that MEAC winner was because you have to concentrate on the next week, the conference championship game, then you concentrate on the Celebration Bowl.”