get these nets
Veteran
Atlanta’s Celebration Bowl puts HBCU football in national spotlight
About a decade ago, John Grant had a vision.
Pit the two best Black college football teams against each other in a televised bowl game that would determine an HBCU national champion, while putting millions of dollars into the coffers of the traditionally underfunded schools.
Last week, standing alone on the 50-yard line of Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Grant looked out over the empty black and red seats and smiled.
This Saturday, 50,000 seats will be filled when North Carolina Central University (9-2) runs out onto the field to face Jackson State University (12-0) in the 7th Cricket Celebration Bowl.
After selling 48,000 tickets to last year’s game, this year’s contest sold out three weeks ago and ESPN is giving the game a noon kickoff on ABC to usher in the college bowl season.
“We are at that point, you get to year five or six and you start the see the business turn,” said Grant, who is the executive director of the bowl. “This is our Super Bowl.”
No Celebration Bowl has ever been this hyped — partly because of all of the attention swirling around sports legend Deion “Prime Time” Sanders, Jackson State’s departing head coach.
William Pate, CEO of the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the Celebration Bowl and the events around it are expected to pour tens of millions of dollars this week into the Atlanta economy, which would normally be dormant during the holiday season.
Every major downtown hotel is sold out, Pate said.
“Atlanta is one of the top destinations for Black travelers in the country, so this is an opportunity to show off the city,” he added. “We have the perfect venue and Atlanta is the perfect city.”
Representing the two major HBCU conferences, the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) and the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC), the two colleges will each earn $1.2 million for their leagues.
“I remember years ago when this was in its infancy and I never thought it would happen,” said Skip Perkins, athletic director at North Carolina Central University. “To see it now is unbelievable.”
NCCU, the only MEAC team to ever lose a Celebration Bowl, is returning for the first time since 2016.
For Jackson State, the game will mark the end of Sanders’ career at the school, which he has led through a resurgence of funding, recruiting and most importantly, bringing attention to JSU and Historically Black Colleges and Universities overall.
Coach Prime,” as he is called these days, has taken the head coaching job at the University of Colorado in the PAC-12.
In the Black college biosphere, his departure has been equal parts reviled and praised. Sanders, the NFL Hall of Famer for the Atlanta Falcons and former major league baseball star, did not show up at last week’s coach’s press conference but is expected to coach in the game.
The idea of the Celebration Bowl was hatched when Grant was the CEO of 100 Black Men of Atlanta, a civic and social organization that focuses on the development of Black children and teens.
For years, the organization hosted the annual Atlanta Football Classic, an invitational that usually attracted big football programs like Florida A&M, Southern University and Tennessee State University. But waning attendance put the game in peril.