The Heritage Bowl was a NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) bowl game held by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The bowl pitted a team from the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) against a team from the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC). It was hoped that it would become a true national championship game for historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). It was a successor to the Pelican Bowl, which matched MEAC and SWAC teams during the 1970s, and a predecessor to the Celebration Bowl of the 2010s. Background The bowl's legitimacy as an HBCU championship game was called into question immediately, starting with its very first contest, when its committee awarded its automatic bid to the MEAC's second-seeded co-champion, North Carolina A&T, over its top seed, Delaware State (Delaware State had defeated the Aggies head-to-head, on the road even, but their conference victory over Bethune–Cookman was viewed differently as it had been determined by a forfeit). That first game brought other challenges as well, as it also drew only 7,728 spectators and lost future support from its title sponsor, Alamo, in the process. "That left the organizers $1 million in debt and blaming each other for the bowl's problems. President James McKinley, ousted in January, sued Alamo and his board of directors to win back his now largely meaningless post." The bowl also still owed its participating schools money months after the game. Heritage Bowl II did not fair all that much better, as it was played without a title sponsor and featured neither the MEAC champion nor the SWAC champion. Even after moving to a January date and having Florida A&M serve as a de facto home team, the game still could only attract 11,273 fans—albeit an improvement over the previous game. In subsequent years half of the conferences' top seeds declined the automatic bowl bid in order to participate in the NCAA Division I–AA playoffs instead. This became an especially common issue for the MEAC, often leaving its runner-up—or even its third seed, for the final three Heritage Bowls—to represent the conference. The bowl peaked in the mid-1990s as it found a new stable home (Atlanta's Georgia Dome) and a new title sponsor (Jim Walter Homes), all while attendance sharply increased—and the December 30, 1994 game finally got to pair the top-seeded champions from both leagues. This renaissance was short-lived, however, with attendance leveling off as the game