The Celebration Bowl spotlights HBCU football’s best. It almost never happened

One of the challenges of being a visionary is that others can’t always see what you see. Dr. Dennis Thomas knows this from experience.

In 2004, Thomas helped broker the deal to have the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) and Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) open their football seasons against each other. While others patted themselves on the back and saw it as a job well done, Thomas saw it as an opportunity for something bigger and better.

Then, as the commissioner of the MEAC, he proposed to chancellors, presidents, athletic directors and coaches the idea of not only opening the season with a showdown between the conferences — which happen to be the only two Division I leagues comprised of historically Black colleges and universities — but also ending the year against each other.

The creation of the Celebration Bowl was a bold and controversial idea because it would mean relinquishing the MEAC’s automatic berth in the Division I-AA national playoffs, now known as the Football Championship Subdivision. But Thomas believed in the need to chart a new course because the playoffs were not benefiting the conferences competitively or financially.

He took his idea of a postseason bowl between the MEAC and SWAC champions to the body, believing it would recognize the economic necessity of change, but his recommendation was roundly rejected. Not once or twice but in each of the 10 consecutive years in which he made the pitch.

“It was discouraging, just the fact that you have a vision and not everyone can see what you see,” Thomas said. “When they can’t see what you see, they think what you see is not legitimate, not credible. But you have to persevere. I didn’t give up.”

On the 11th try — with a major assist from ESPN, which guaranteed a payout of $1 million to each conference — Thomas was able to push across the finish line a bowl game to determine the Black college football national champion. And when the eighth edition of the Celebration Bowl kicks off Saturday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, with MEAC champion Howard taking on SWAC champion Florida A&M, it’s doubtful anyone will watch with greater pride than the man whose vision, perseverance and humility led to the game’s creation.

It’s easy to gloss over the notion that Thomas faced a decade of rejection or to simply read over the words and move on. But it hits differently if you stop and say it out loud:

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

“After the fifth rejection, I was crushed,” Thomas said. “My athletic directors at the time said, ‘Dennis, don’t bring this up anymore.’

“You know what I did the next year? I brought it up again.”

The votes were still the same:

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

Some would consider such rejection humiliating or humbling, but Thomas never took it personally. Much of his life had been about overcoming obstacles, from growing up on a small farm in Heidelberg, Miss., where his mother was an elementary school teacher and his father was a skilled laborer, to enrolling at Alcorn State University as a 16-year-old, to becoming a two-time Black college All-American and the only offensive lineman in SWAC history to be named Offensive Player of the Year. He worked his way up from being an assistant football coach to becoming the head coach at South Carolina State in 1986, the athletic director at Hampton University in 1990 and the commissioner of the MEAC in 2002, a position he held until 2021.

Some focus on what directly is in front of them, but Thomas always could see the big picture. It’s why he said his proudest career accomplishment was increasing the graduation rate of student-athletes during his time as commissioner, followed by improving fundraising efforts through agreements with ESPN and Nike, among others.

It’s also why he never stopped fighting to create the Celebration Bowl, which has drawn at least 31,000 fans in all but one year and topped out at nearly 50,000 fans in each of the past two seasons. The game will be broadcast Saturday on ABC at noon ET. Additionally, on Friday night, the inaugural Battle of the (marching) Bands will take place to determine the HBCU national champion.

Everything about the game and its surrounding events revolves around Black culture, be it music, fashion, dance or traditions. But wade beneath the surface and the game also shares one significant characteristic with every other bowl: economic sustenance. That reality is how Thomas finally sold the idea to the leadership of the conferences.

Year after year, Thomas kept running into the same roadblock, a belief that the conferences needed to remain mainstream. The qualified teams played in the FCS playoffs, and the MEAC and SWAC needed to be considered part of the group. But Thomas kept presenting data that overwhelmingly showed the conferences were not benefiting competitively or financially from participating — at least not to the point that it was making a positive impact on their athletic budgets. That might have been tolerable if their teams were winning playoff games, but they were not, so he needed a new plan of attack.

In 2014, Thomas requested a face-to-face sit-down with then-ESPN president John Skipper to gauge whether Skipper would meet with the conferences’ chancellors and presidents and also publicly pledge the network’s commitment to broadcasting, marketing and promoting the game, as well as the conferences’ universities and the traditions and rich histories of HBCUs.

When Skipper agreed, Thomas moved on to the second step. He asked Pete Derzis, an ESPN executive who was the point person for special events, to request a $1 million guarantee from the network for each of the conferences. It took only 15 minutes or so to get that approval. The only thing left was a vote by the leadership.

“The presidents told Mr. Skipper they would consider it,” Thomas said. “I was overjoyed when they approved it. It was just a matter of trying to get the right formula to show the coaches and ADs that this is what we need to do.”

With funding in place, they needed someone who could bring the vision to life — a builder, if you will. Enter John T. Grant Jr., then the CEO of 100 Black Men of Atlanta, an organization that “provides support and improves the quality of life for African Americans, particularly youth, through educational and economic opportunities in the Atlanta community.”

Grant, who had a reputation for getting things done as an organizer and leader, was believed to be the right person for the job because as chairman of the Atlanta Football Classic from 1999 to 2001, he helped the event break attendance and revenue records. The game became not only one of the top three recurring sporting events in the state but also one of the top four convention events in Georgia.

Initially, Grant turned down offers to join ESPN and oversee the implementation of the Celebration Bowl, but he ultimately changed his mind.

“I love building things,” said Grant, who is now ESPN’s executive director for the MEAC-SWAC Challenge Kickoff and the Celebration Bowl. “I get energized at the idea of conceptualizing and building. In anything that you start, it takes three components: It takes an idea, then you have to have financing, then you have to have somebody to build it. You have to have all three. There are a lot of great ideas in file drawers because there either wasn’t financing or the people to bring it to fruition. My role was to bring it to fruition.”

Grant points to various studies that have identified a causal effect of athletic success/national exposure and an increased interest in participating institutions.

For instance, Georgetown University reportedly saw a 45 percent increase in admission applications in the mid-1980s during its run of basketball success, and Northwestern University saw a 21 percent increase the year after its football team won the Big Ten Championship. In 2013, professor Doug J. Chung published findings at Harvard Business School that showed applications increase by 17 percent when “a mediocre team rises to greatness” and that “schools that want to attain similar results without a winning team must either lower tuition by 3.8 percent or recruit higher-quality faculty.”

According to Grant, admission applications at North Carolina A&T increased from about 7,000 in 2015 to more than 48,000 in 2019, partly because the Aggies received national exposure from participating in five Celebration Bowls.

“College athletics is the front door to the institution,” he said. “The more you’re on TV, the more you drive student recruiting and interest in university. And the more you drive student recruiting, the more you drive revenue. And the more you drive revenue — if you’re winning — the money comes in from donors and corporations within the state because everyone wants to be a part of that.”

For all the Celebration Bowl’s success, there remained a significant test for it going into last year: How would it fare when pitted against other games during its time slot? Initially, it was the only game in the noon-to-3 p.m. ET window, but last year the Wasabi Fenway Bowl started an hour before kickoff and the Indianapolis Colts-Minnesota Vikings NFL game started an hour into the game.

The Celebration Bowl and the MEAC-SWAC Challenge are not simply about business to Grant. They’re personal. As a graduate of North Carolina A&T, which participated in four of the first five Celebration Bowl games, he takes pride in showing off the history and traditions of HBCU life. And like Thomas, he could see the long-term value of the guaranteed payouts — which will be $1.2 million this year — and the exposure from partnering with a major broadcast network.

“But our viewership numbers held,” Grant said. “That was strong for us.”

The belief among those associated with the game is that it will only get stronger, which brings a smile to the face of Thomas, who remained committed to his vision when others could not see it.

“My cup runneth over,” he said. “You never know if your vision will come to fruition or not, but I had an idea that this could really be big, and lo and behold, that’s what it has turned into.”