Pioneer Bowl (HBCU)

The Pioneer Bowl was an annual American NCAA Division II college football bowl game contested between NCAA Division II teams from the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) and Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC), two athletic conferences traditionally consisting of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Between 1997 and 2012, the game was played 14 times in five different cities in the South.

History

The Pioneer Bowl was created in January 1997 to match teams from the CIAA and SIAC that did not qualify for the NCAA Division II National Football Championship playoffs. It was the first Division II postseason contest sanctioned by the NCAA for purely consolation purposes. From the creation of the division in 1973 through 1985, all Division II bowl games had been integrated into the playoff structure, as quarterfinal, semifinal, or final games. From 1986 through 1996, no Division II postseason games had carried a "bowl" designation.

The Pioneer Bowl was held 14 times in 16 years (with cancellations in 2002 and 2008). The SIAC won nine of the games and the CIAA five.
The bowl only included champions of the CIAA or SIAC when those schools failed to meet the criteria for postseason playoff bids (a possibility in Division II, which has no automatic qualifiers). A perennial exception was Tuskegee, whose traditional regular season finale against Alabama State in the Turkey Day Classic on Thanksgiving Day came after the first round of the playoffs. The Pioneer Bowl thus served as Tuskegee's only postseason opportunity in several cases when it would have qualified for the Division II playoffs, most notably in 2000 and 2007, seasons in which the Golden Tigers finished a perfect 12–0. Overall, Tuskegee appeared in the bowl ten times, winning seven.

Throughout its history, the Pioneer Bowl suffered from instability with promoters, sponsors, and venues. Its fourteen games were held in six stadiums in five cities, across four states. The first six contests were in Atlanta, two at Herndon Stadium on the campus of Morris Brown College, then four at the Georgia Dome, home of the Atlanta Falcons. After one year in Mobile, Alabama, the bowl was played twice in Charlotte, North Carolina and twice in Columbia, South Carolina, before the CIAA and SIAC signed a three-year contract to hold the game in Columbus, Georgia from 2010 through 2012.

The 2013 game was to be played on the home field of the CIAA representative but was cancelled on short notice "due to budgetary restraints." In 2014, the two conferences again waited until November before cancelling the game, issuing a joint statement: "While the Pioneer Bowl stands as the longest running bowl game in the history of black colleges and a national showcase for student-athletes, we decided that it is in the best interest of our membership, fans and student-athletes to not hold the game this year. We are currently undecided if we will reinstate the Pioneer Bowl game in the future." The game was never played again.

The CIAA–SIAC postseason rivalry was revived in 2023 with the creation of the Florida Beach Bowl.

Game results

Winning teams and their scores appear in bold font.

Of the 14 games played between HBCUs, SIAC teams won 9 and CIAA teams won 5.

Cancelled games

See also

* List of college bowl games
* Heritage Bowl, a contemporary HBCU bowl game, which operated from 1991 to 1999
* Celebration Bowl, a current bowl game for HBCUs within the Football Championship Subdivision
* Florida Beach Bowl, a bowl game for CIAA and SIAC teams, introduced in 2023

References

{{NCAA Division II bowl game navbox

Defunct college football bowls