South Carolina State beat Prairie View A&M 40-38 in four overtimes in the 10th Cricket Celebration Bowl on December 13, 2025 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. It was the first game of the bowl season and, by a reasonable argument, the best one.

The format

The Celebration Bowl matches the champion of the MEAC against the champion of the SWAC and functions as the de facto Black college football national championship. It has been played in Atlanta since 2015 and consistently draws one of the strongest atmospheres of the postseason — band, crowd and stakes all operating at a level the December bowl calendar rarely reaches.

Prairie View A&M entered as a two-and-a-half point favorite.

A game that shouldn't have been close

South Carolina State was being handled early. Then the Bulldogs lost starting quarterback William Atkins, which under normal circumstances ends the discussion.

Ryan Stubblefield came in and played the game of his life. South Carolina State climbed back, tied it, then gave up a 78-yard touchdown pass to Cameron Bonner that should have finished them a second time. The Bulldogs put together another drive to tie it again and force overtime.

Four overtimes

The extra periods produced traded field goals, an interception, a missed chip-shot field goal, and two failed two-point conversion attempts before the fourth overtime.

There, Stubblefield found Jordan Smith on a two-point conversion pass for the win. The play drew some dispute — reporting at the time indicated the call on the field was questionable and that the replay review did not clarify it. That is a genuinely unsatisfying way for a game like this to end, and it has not stopped anyone from remembering the rest of it.

Why it belongs in the season's top tier

Bowl season is graded on drama, and this one had a backup quarterback comeback, a 78-yard haymaker, four overtimes, and a two-point conversion to decide it. College Football News ranked it fourth among all bowl games for the season — ahead of most of the New Year's Six.

It also kicked the whole thing off. Before the Cotton Bowl upset, before Ole Miss and Georgia, before Indiana finished 16-0, the Celebration Bowl set the standard on the first Saturday.

The case for paying attention

The Celebration Bowl gets less national coverage than any game of comparable quality on the calendar. It airs on ABC in an early window, competes with nothing, and routinely delivers.

South Carolina State's win added to a program history that includes multiple appearances in this game. For Prairie View A&M, a SWAC title and a two-point loss in four overtimes is a season that deserved better than the footnote treatment it will likely get in most year-end recaps.

If you build a bowl-season viewing plan around what is likely to be entertaining rather than what is likely to be ranked, this game belongs near the top of it every December.