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For the 2024 MEAC/SWAC Challenge, the Norfolk State Spartans and Florida A&M Rattlers will kick off on national television on ABC. ESPN revealed the college football schedules for Week 0 and Week 1 and highlighted some of the marquee matchups.
The Week 0 games start Saturday, Aug. 24 at noon with a clash between Florida State and Georgia Tech in Ireland. Later that same day, Florida A&M and Norfolk State begin the HBCU football season and fight for MEAC/SWAC bragging rights at 7:30 p.m. The following Thursday, Aug. 29, former Jackson State coach Deion Sanders leads the Colorado Buffaloes against FCS juggernaut North Dakota State.
Last year, new head coach T.C. Taylor and Jackson State made an emphatic statement with a 37-7 win over South Carolina State. Leading up to the game, former South Carolina State coach Buddy Pough discussed the importance of HBCU visibility on the national stage.
“It's fun,” he said. “We get a chance to play on ABC. We'll be one of the only schools playing. All the colleges in the HBCU will be watching. All the ingredients that you want are there. We should have a good viewership.”
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Although Pough's Bulldogs fell short against Jackson State, the now-retired head coach correctly predicted the significant viewership statistics. Despite the final score, the Jackson State and South Carolina State game drew in about 922,000 viewers on ABC, according to Sports Media Watch. Those ratings placed second in Week 0 behind Navy and Notre Dame, which garnered 3.56 million viewers on NBC.
It beat out other games like UMass versus New Mexico State (582,000), Ohio versus San Diego State (466,000), and North Alabama versus Mercer (457,000). The game also improved heavily upon the 2022 MEAC/SWAC Challenge ratings. The game between Howard and Alabama State recorded 485,000 viewers, but JSU and South Carolina State nearly doubled those numbers.
With low competition that Saturday and another national platform, the MEAC/SWAC Challenge should expect to reach even higher viewership statistics, potentially breaking the one million-viewer threshold. The game features a Norfolk State team that, although in the rebuilding process, showed a lot of promise in the 2023 season. From Sept. 30 to the end of the season, the Spartans lost one-score games to North Carolina A&T, Tennessee State, Howard (MEAC Champions), and Morgan State. They also played a competitive game against North Carolina Central, a team that nearly repeated as MEAC Champions last season.
On the other side, Florida A&M is coming off of a historic season. The Rattlers secured their first SWAC Championship since switching into the conference in 2021, and they defeated Howard in the Celebration Bowl. Florida A&M has its questions to answer, however. The team lost multiple starters to the NFL, including the SWAC Offensive Player and Defensive Player of the Year in quarterback Jeremy Moussa and linebacker Isaiah Major. The team also lost longtime head coach Willie Simmons to Duke University. Florida A&M may be coming off a Celebration Bowl victory, but new head coach James Colzie III and his Rattlers have to prove they can keep up the high level of success set by the previous regime.
