Ok Tiger1 and others....
This is per Wikipedia with this support references.
Championship bowl games[edit]
Attempts have been made over the years to determine a non-mythical national champion with an actual football game contested by leading teams among HBCUs throughout the United States. The
Orange Blossom Classic was often billed as such a game, but
Florida A&M, as its annual host, was guaranteed a spot in this game and was not always of national championship-caliber each year that it was played between 1933 and 1978 (indeed, the Rattlers were even accused of taking advantage of a system where most selectors named their national champions before the postseason; if the Rattlers were not named champs by any selector before the postseason, they still got a second chance at the claim by winning the Orange Blossom Classic
[5]).
Contests including the Colored Championships of 1920 and 1923 (which happened to feature members of the
Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association, although the games were not played for the conference title), the Chocolate Bowl (1935), the Steel and Vulcan bowls (1940–41), the National Bowl (1947), and the National Football Classic (1954) were attempted periodically but without any sustained success.
The
Pelican Bowl, a
bowl game that tried to match up the conference champions from the
Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference and the
Southwestern Athletic Conference, was another such example—and actually did manage to last several seasons—but even this venture failed to draw enough attendance and lasted only a few years in the 1970s. Similarly, the
Heritage Bowl was played in the 1990s featuring teams from the MEAC and SWAC, but this bowl game has not been held since 1999 and was often snubbed by the conference champions in lieu of the NCAA's
Division I-AA playoffs.
The two conferences began negotiations in 2010 to create a successor called the "Legacy Bowl"—not to be confused with the later
exhibition game with the same name—to begin during the 2011 postseason, but it was voted down by MEAC officials.
[6] However, in 2015 the first
Air Force Reserve Celebration Bowl was played, pitting the champions of both conferences.
While the Celebration Bowl's trophy itself only includes the inscription "Celebration Bowl Champions,"[7] the bowl's creator (ESPN),[8][9] as well as its title sponsor (Air Force Reserve)[10][11] and other sponsors,[12][13][14] have indicated that it is for the HBCU national title—as have coaches of participating teams.[15][16]
