South Carolina State vs Prairie View A&M prediction: Celebration Bowl odds, pick, best bet
The Cricket Celebration Bowl serves as an opening ceremony of sorts for the college football postseason.Launched a decade ago, the Celebration Bowl pits the winner of the MEAC against the SWAC, leading it to be monikered as the HBCU National Championship.The most famous iteration came in 2021 when Deion Sanders, Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter represented Jackson State against South Carolina State.The Tigers lost that battle, 31-10, but it served as a launchpad for this game and the careers of Sanders and Hunter.This will be South Carolina State’s third trip to the Celebration Bowl in five years.The Bulldogs are 1.5-point favorites over Prairie View A&M.Prairie View A&M rode a tremendous defense to its first SWAC Championship since 2009, defeating Jackson State, 23-21.It was just the second time in the Panthers’ last nine contests that they allowed their opponent to score more than 12 points.Prairie View’s schedule is littered with soft opponents, but that doesn’t diminish the returns.
The Panthers went into the SWAC Championship having held five of their last six opponents to single-digit totals.South Carolina State should provide a much tougher task than a lot of the SWAC teams that the Panthers shut down, but the Bulldogs are not world-beaters on offense.They’ve posted some crooked numbers, but the strength of schedule certainly helped bolster their offensive output.
SP+ ranks SC State as the 30th-best offense in FCS.It’s not the easiest endeavor to handicap FCS games because the statistics are a bit murkier than at the FBS level, but there are some sharp prediction models out there, like SP+ and Sagarin.Both of them have this as a coin flip, which is why it’s no shock to see such a tight line.That said, there does seem to be more paths to success for Prairie View A&M in this contest.They’ve got the better defense, and they’re also not dead in the water if South Carolina State gets the game on its terms and turns it into a track ...