2023 Celebration Bowl
The 2023 Celebration Bowl was a college football bowl game played on December 16, 2023, at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia. The eighth annual Celebration Bowl featured the champions of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC), the Howard Bison, and the champions of the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC), the Florida A&M Rattlers. The game began at approximately 12:00 p.m. EST and was aired on ABC. Sponsored by Cricket Wireless, the game was officially known as the Cricket Celebration Bowl.
| 2023 Cricket Celebration Bowl | |||||||||||||||||||
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| 8th Celebration Bowl | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Date | December 16, 2023 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Season | 2023 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Stadium | Mercedes-Benz Stadium | ||||||||||||||||||
| Location | Atlanta, Georgia | ||||||||||||||||||
| MVP | Kelvin Dean (RB, Florida A&M) & Isaiah Major (LB, Florida A&M) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Favorite | Florida A&M by 6.5 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Referee | Christian Watson (Mountain West) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Halftime show | Howard "Showtime" Marching Band and Florida A&M Marching 100 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Attendance | 41,108 | ||||||||||||||||||
| United States TV coverage | |||||||||||||||||||
| Network | ABC | ||||||||||||||||||
| Announcers | Tiffany Greene (play-by-play), Jay Walker (analyst), and Quint Kessenich (sideline) | ||||||||||||||||||
| International TV coverage | |||||||||||||||||||
| Network | Canada: TSN2 Brazil: ESPN Brazil | ||||||||||||||||||
| Announcers | Matheus Pinheiro (play-by-play) and Rafael Belattini (analyst) | ||||||||||||||||||
The SWAC and MEAC are the two NCAA Division I conferences of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). The Celebration Bowl thus serves as a de facto black college football national championship.
The Celebration Bowl was the only one of the 2023–24 bowl games involving teams from the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). The NCAA structured a 24-team bracket tournament to determine a champion for the 2023 FCS football season. The 2023 Celebration Bowl was the first time the SWAC champions defeated the MEAC champions since the 2016.