The Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) is a collegiate athletic conference headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, which is made up of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the Southern United States. It participates in the NCAA's Division I for most sports; in football, it participates in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), formerly referred to as Division I-AA.
Deion Luwynn Sanders Sr. is an American football coach and former player who is the head coach of the Colorado Buffaloes football team. Nicknamed "Prime Time", he played in the National Football League (NFL) for 14 seasons with the Atlanta Falcons, San Francisco 49ers, Dallas Cowboys, Washington Redskins, and Baltimore Ravens. Sanders was also a baseball outfielder for nine seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) with the New York Yankees, Atlanta Braves, Cincinnati Reds, and San Francisco Giants. He won two Super Bowl titles and made one World Series appearance in 1992, making him the only athlete to play in both a Super Bowl and a World Series.
Robert M. Hopkins was an American basketball player and coach.
The Akron Zips football team is a college football program representing the University of Akron in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Akron plays its home games on InfoCision Stadium on the campus of the University of Akron in Akron, Ohio. The Zips compete in the Mid-American Conference as a member of the East Division.
The Savannah State Tigers and Lady Tigers are the men's and women's intercollegiate athletic teams that play for Savannah State University in Savannah, Georgia.
The black college football national championship is a national championship honor that, since 1920, has been regularly bestowed upon the best football teams among historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) within the United States.
Marino H. "The Godfather" Casem was an American college football coach and athletic administrator. He served as the head coach at Alabama State University (1963), Alcorn State University (1964–1985), and Southern University, compiling a career record of 159–93–8. Casem's Alcorn State Braves teams won four black college national championships and seven Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) titles. Casem also served as the athletic director at Alcorn State from 1966 to 1986 and at Southern from 1986 to 1999. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2003.
Davey Lee Whitney Sr., also known as "The Wiz", was an American college basketball coach and the head basketball coach at Texas Southern University from 1964 to 1969 and Alcorn State University from 1969 to 1989 and 1996 to 2003. He amassed a total record of 566 wins and 356 losses in 33 seasons of coaching at both institutions.
The Alcorn State Braves baseball team is the varsity intercollegiate baseball program of Alcorn State University in Lorman, Mississippi, United States. The program's first season was in 1959, and it has been a member of the NCAA Division I Southwestern Athletic Conference since the start of the 1963 season. Its home venue is the Foster Baseball Field at McGowan Stadium, located on Alcorn State's campus. Carlton Hardy has been the team's head coach since the 2025 season. The program has appeared in 1 NCAA Tournament. It has won one conference tournament championship and 0 regular season conference titles. As of the start of the 2021 Major League Baseball season, 1 former Brave has appeared in Major League Baseball.
James Walter Hopson is an American football coach and former player. In 2016, Hopson made history as the only head coach in the history of the state of Mississippi to guide two different in-state universities to bowl games when he led the University of Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles to a victory in the New Orleans Bowl. During his head-coaching tenure with the University of Southern Mississippi (2016–2020), Hopson ushered the Golden Eagles to four straight bowl-eligible seasons, with his defenses and offenses ranking in the top-5 and top-25 in the NCAA, respectively. Additionally, in his four full seasons from 2016 to 2019, Hopson guided the University of Southern Mississippi to 20 conference wins, which made him the second-winningest coach in Conference-USA during that span.
The Southwestern Athletic Conference baseball tournament decides the conference baseball championship of the NCAA Division I Southwestern Athletic Conference. The top four finishers in each conference division participate in a two-bracket, double-elimination tournament, most recently played in Birmingham, Alabama, between May 25 and May 29, 2022. The winner of the tournament receives an automatic berth to the NCAA tournament and, since 2019, to the HBCU World Series.
Barret L. Rey is an American college baseball coach. Rey previously served as head coach of the Grambling State Tigers baseball team from 2007 through 2009 and the Alcorn State Braves baseball team from 2010 through 2015.
James Cooper is an American baseball coach and former outfielder. He played college baseball for the Grambling State Tigers from 2001 to 2004 before playing professionally from 2004 to 2006. He then served as head coach of the Grambling State Tigers (2010–2021).
The 2015 Alcorn State Braves football team represented Alcorn State University in the 2015 NCAA Division I FCS football season. The Braves were led by fourth-year head coach Jay Hopson and played their home games at Casem-Spinks Stadium. They were a member of the East Division of the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) and finished with a record of 9–4 as SWAC champions after they defeated Grambling State in the SWAC Championship Game. Alcorn State then played in the Celebration Bowl against North Carolina A&T, losing by a score of 41–34.
The 2016 Conference USA football season was the 21st season of Conference USA football and part of the 2016 NCAA Division I FBS football season. The season began on September 1 with Charlotte facing Louisville. This season was the second season for the C-USA under realignment that took place in 2014, which added the 14th member Charlotte from the Atlantic 10 Conference. The C-USA is a "Group of Five" conference under the College Football Playoff format along with the American Athletic Conference, the Mid-American Conference, the Mountain West Conference, and the Sun Belt Conference.
The 2017 Grambling State Tigers football team represented Grambling State University in the 2017 NCAA Division I FCS football season. The Tigers were led by fourth-year head coach Broderick Fobbs and played their home games at Eddie Robinson Stadium in Grambling, Louisiana as members of the West Division of the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC). The Tigers finished the season 11–2, 7–0 in SWAC play to win the West Division. They defeated Alcorn State in the SWAC Championship Game, receiving the conference's bid to the Celebration Bowl where they lost to North Carolina A&T.
The 2017–18 Grambling State Tigers men's basketball team represented Grambling State University during the 2017–18 NCAA Division I men's basketball season. The Tigers, led by first-year head coach Donte Jackson, played their home games at the Fredrick C. Hobdy Assembly Center in Grambling, Louisiana as members of the Southwestern Athletic Conference.
The 2017–18 Texas Southern Tigers basketball team represented Texas Southern University during the 2017–18 NCAA Division I men's basketball season. The Tigers, led by sixth-year head coach Mike Davis, played their home games at the Health and Physical Education Arena in Houston, Texas as members of the Southwestern Athletic Conference. They finished the season 16–20, 12–6 in SWAC play to finish in a three-way tie for second place. Due to Grambling State's Academic Progress Rate violations and subsequent postseason ineligibility, they received the No. 3 seed in the SWAC tournament where they defeated Alabama State, Prairie View A&M and Arkansas–Pine Bluff to become SWAC Tournament champions. They received the SWAC's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament where they defeated North Carolina Central in the First Four before losing in the first round to Xavier.
The 2017 Celebration Bowl was a post-season American college football bowl game that was played on December 16, 2017 at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia. This third Celebration Bowl game matched the champion of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, against the champion of the Southwestern Athletic Conference, the two historically black division I conferences. The event was the finale of the 2017 FCS football season for both conferences as neither had teams earn an at large selections into the NCAA Division I FCS football playoffs and their champions abstain from the tournament.
Bretton Richardson is an American baseball coach and former catcher, who is the a current assistant coach for the Florida A&M Rattlers. He played college baseball at Florida A&M. Richardson then served as the head coach of the Florida A&M Rattlers (2011) and the Alcorn State Braves (2016–2021).
