SWAC to wrap
The Southwestern Athletic Conference’s unorthodox spring season is set to conclude Saturday when No. 22 Alabama A&M plays No. 25 University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff in the conference title game at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium in Jackson, Miss.
Several FCS leagues postponed their fall seasons until the spring because of covid-19 concerns, but the Southwestern Athletic Conference was one of the first to release an actual schedule.
On Saturday, the SWAC spring season will wrap up when No. 22 Alabama A&M plays No. 25 University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff in the conference title game at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium in Jackson, Miss.
“This is going to be a matchup that we think will be exciting,” SWAC Commissioner Charles McClelland said during a Zoom meeting with the media Monday. “Two top 25 teams, and both have had successful seasons.”
There were reservations from many about whether a spring season would work. Those worries led to two of the 13 FCS leagues — the Ivy League and the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference — to bow out all together. The MEAC planned to participate before six of its nine teams opted out. The other 11 conferences decided to play on, with 10 of them sending teams to the ongoing FCS playoffs.
The SWAC doesn’t take part in the FCS playoffs. The last time the conference had a team play in the FCS playoffs was in 1997 when Jackson State was beaten by Western Illinois in the first round.
This SWAC championship game will take place during unprecedented times, and McClelland said there were a slew of problems the league had to endure to get to championship week.
“It was a difficult spring, and I can’t put a Band-Aid over it,” said McClelland, who took over for Edgar Gantt in 2018. “There were several covid stoppages here within the last couple of weeks. There have been some increases in covid cases, and we’ve had some states to loosen their restrictions. We’ve had some of our football teams, quite frankly, negatively impacted because of some of those restrictions that were limited.”
Nine of the 10 teams in the SWAC had at least one of their six conference games altered because of problems related to covid-19, albeit for different reasons. For instance, both Alabama A&M and UAPB had games canceled last week because of coronavirus issues with their opponents. Prairie View A&M and Texas Southern were limited to three games because of multiple cancellations.
Alabama State was the only team that played its original schedule, although the Hornets did receive a forfeiture from Alcorn State after the Braves decided not to play this spring just before the start of the season.
McClelland said there also were successes this season. Eleven games were aired on ESPN platforms, including ESPNU and the internet-based ESPN3. Five of those broadcast contests involved Jackson State, which wasn’t a surprise since the Tigers hired NFL Hall of Famer Deion Sanders in September. Four other games were scheduled to be shown but were canceled.
Saturday’s SWAC title game will be shown on ESPN2.
“[ESPN] chose which games they wanted to air, and they chose which games they wanted to bump up,” McClelland said. “It has given us a great level of exposure because they chose quite a few of our games that were not slated for that. A lot of people got an opportunity to see Southwestern Athletic Conference football that would not normally get an opportunity to see it because of the compaction of their schedules.”
McClelland said the SWAC watched how other football-playing conferences handled situations, and that information enabled them to make the necessary adjustments whenever they were needed.
“Health and safety is first and foremost over any other aspect of what we do,” he said. “You have to assess that, and you have to make those decisions. We did not try to make it more difficult for our memberships by trying to force a square peg in a round hole. We wanted to make sure that the student-athletes had all of our resources focused on playing the sport of football.
“If they could not play, then we made sure that we created a process to where the could get as many [games] in as possible.”
The SWAC, barring any jarring setbacks, will get that final game in Saturday. Both the Bulldogs and Golden Lions are 4-0 and will be playing inside a 60,000-plus seat venue that’ll be open to 50% capacity.