The SWAC is considered the premier HBCU conference and ranks among the elite in the nation in terms of alumni affiliated with professional sports teams, particularly in football.[1] On the gridiron, the conference has been the biggest draw on the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) level of the NCAA, leading the nation in average home attendance every year except one since FCS has been in existence.[2][3] In 1994, the SWAC fell just 40,000 fans short of becoming the first non-Football Bowl Subdivision conference to attract one million fans to its home games.
History
Location of SWAC members
300km 200miles
Alabama A&M
Texas Southern
Southern
Prairie View A&M
Grambling State
Arkansas–Pine Bluff
Alcorn State
Mississippi Valley State
Jackson State
Florida A&M
Bethune-Cookman
Alabama State
Location of SWAC members: East Division, West Division
In 1920, athletic officials from six Texas HBCUs — C. H. Fuller of Bishop College, Red Randolph and C. H. Patterson of Paul Quinn College, E. G. Evans, H. J. Evans and H. J. Starns of Prairie View A&M, D. C. Fuller of Texas College and G. Whitte Jordan of Wiley University — met in Houston to discuss common interests. At this meeting, they agreed to form a new league, the SWAC.[citation needed]
Rapid growth in enrollment of the state-supported schools made it difficult for the church-supported schools to finance their athletics programs and one by one they fell victim to the growing prowess of the state-supported colleges. Huston–Tillotson (formerly Samuel Huston) withdrew from the conference in 1954,[4]Bishop in 1956, and Langston in 1957—one year before the admittance of two more state-supported schools: Grambling College and Jackson State College. The enter-exit cycle continued in 1962 when Texas College withdrew,[5] followed by the admittance of Alcorn A&M (now Alcorn State University) that same year. Wiley left in 1968, the same year Mississippi Valley State College entered. Arkansas AM&N exited in 1970 and Alabama State University entered in 1982. Arkansas–Pine Bluff (formerly Arkansas AM&N) rejoined the SWAC on July 1, 1997, regaining full-member status one year later. Alabama A&M University became the conference's tenth member when it became a full member in September 1999 after a one-year period as an affiliate SWAC member.[6] Most of the former SWAC members that have left the conference are currently a part of the Red River Athletic Conference of the NAIA.
On 3 September 2020, the SWAC had announced that there would be a division realignment with the additions of Florida A&M University and Bethune-Cookman University beginning with the 2021–22 academic year; which both would compete in the SWAC East, while Alcorn State would be moving to the SWAC West.[7]
The SWAC is one of three FCS conferences – the others being the Ivy League and the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference – whose conference champion does not participate in the FCS playoffs, opting instead to play in the Celebration Bowl against the champion of the MEAC. However, SWAC teams can still be invited via an at-large invitation, as was the case in 2021 when SWAC member Florida A&M University was invited over SWAC conference football champion Jackson State, who was obligated via contract to play in the 2021 Celebration Bowl. The SWAC instead splits its schools into two divisions, and plays a conference championship game. Three of the SWAC's teams, Alabama State in the Turkey Day Classic and Grambling and Southern in the Bayou Classic, play their last games of the regular season on Thanksgiving weekend, preventing the SWAC Championship from being decided until the first weekend of December, long after the tournament is underway.
Current championship competition offered by the SWAC includes competition for men in baseball, basketball, cross country, football, golf, indoor track, outdoor track & field and tennis. Women's competition is offered in the sports of basketball, bowling, cross country, golf, indoor track, outdoor track & field, soccer, softball, tennis and volleyball.[6]
Member schools
Current full members
The SWAC currently has 12 full members, all but one are public schools:
^Alcorn State has a Lorman mailing address, but is located in an unincorporated area of Claiborne County that is designated by the U.S. Census Bureau as Alcorn State, Mississippi.
^Arkansas–Pine Bluff left the SWAC after the 1969–70 school year as Arkansas AM&N; before re-joining in the 1997–98 school year as an affiliate, and to gain full member status the following season (1998–99).
Former members
The SWAC had six former full members, all but one were private schools:
^Bishop was originally at Marshall, Texas, during its tenure with the SWAC until 1961, when the college was moved to Dallas, Texas, until the school's closing in 1988
^Bishop was closed in 1988. Upon its closure, Paul Quinn College relocated from Waco to Dallas and re-established itself at the Bishop College campus.
^Formerly known as Samuel Huston College until its merger with Tillotson College on October 24, 1952.
A medal podium at the 2021 SWAC Outdoor Track and Field Championship
Football
Prior to splitting into divisions and using a postseason championship game to decide its overall champion, the SWAC determined its champions by winning-percentage against conference opponents in regular season play.
In 1933 Langston appeared to win the title outright with a 4–0 conference record after the regular season, while Wiley finished 4–1, and Prairie View A&M finished 3–1. Langston was invited to the Prairie View Bowl, which was won by Prairie View. The Panthers subsequently declared themselves SWAC champions even though their claim was based on a postseason game. The SWAC seems to acknowledge both schools' claims to the title in the conference's football media guide,[14] although some other sources[15] including Michael Hurd's Black College Football, 1892–1992: One Hundred Years of History, Education, and Pride (1993) also list Wiley as an additional co-champion, apparently since all three schools had 4–1 records against conference opponents if the postseason game is incorporated into the regular season conference standings.
Prairie View vacated[15] its 1941 championship.[16] No championship was awarded in 1943 due to World War II.[15] Grambling vacated its 1975 championship due to a violation of SWAC rules for scheduling opponents.
Games from 1999 to 2012 were played at Legion Field in Birmingham, Alabama. The conference moved the game in 2013 to NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. Starting in 2019, the game will officially be played at the first place team's home. Since 2015, the winner of the SWAC plays the winner of the MEAC conference in an overall HBCU championship bowl game called the Celebration Bowl in Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The MEAC gave up its automatic bid to the FCS Playoffs for this game.
Texas Southern vacated its 2010 championship due to violations of NCAA rules.[17]
The 2020–21 football season was played during Spring 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since splitting into western and eastern divisions and using a postseason championship game to decide its overall champion, the SWAC determines its division champions by winning-percentage against conference opponents in regular season play. For the 1999 season only, inter-divisional conference games did not count in the conference standings. Each division's outright champion or top-seeded co-champion advances to the championship game.[14]
Texas Southern vacated its 2010 division championship due to violations of NCAA rules.[17]
Note: an asterisk denotes the division's top-seeded co-champion and representative in the SWAC Championship Game; a double-asterisk denotes that the division's co-champion was ineligible for the SWAC Championship Game due to a violation of SWAC rules that were in effect from 2011 to 2014 concerning Academic Progress Rate (APR) scores.[19][20]
Starting with the 2021 season with the additions of both Bethune-Cookman and Florida A&M, the football schedule is as follows:
Each school plays eight conference games (five divisional, three non-divisional) and rotates three teams from the opposite division every two years.
The best team in the SWAC gets to host the SWAC championship game.
The SWAC champion advances to the Celebration Bowl versus the MEAC champion. The loser ends its season.
The semi-final and championship SWAC Basketball Tournament games are held at the Bill Harris Arena in Birmingham, Alabama.[22] As of the 2017 tournaments,[23] they feature an eight-team three-day layout with the quarterfinal rounds hosted on campus sites. This changes the previous 10-team, five-day tournament format. The higher seeded teams will host a combined eight games leaving two days for travel and practice rounds. The tournament concludes with the semi-finals and championship rounds inside Birmingham's Bill Harris Arena. Winners of the tournaments earn automatic bids to their respective NCAA Division I Tournaments. The championship games are nationally televised live annually on an ESPN network.
Marching bands have a rich tradition being a centerpiece of school spirit and pride for each institution in the conference. Furthermore, the competitiveness, prestige, pageantry, and showmanship of SWAC marching bands significantly add to the unique identity and culture of the conference.
