Week 12 of the 2014 Black College Football season was one to remember. In addition to two highly competitve and entertaining championship games, there were plenty of upsets to go around.
Virginia State kicked things off by upsetting nationally ranked Winston-Salem State 21-17 in the CIAA Championship Game. This was a major victory for numerous reasons. For one, Virginia State won with a redshirt freshman quarterback, Niko Johnson, who had never started a college game and had only thrown three passes in his career. Two, VSU's win ended WSSU's 30-plus CIAA win-streak and nearly four seasons of invincibility against HBCUs. Finally, it sent Virginia State to the playoffs for the first time in its history.
Over in the SIAC, Tuskegee reclaimed the SIAC Championship with a 47-41 win. It wasn't easy though, as 'Skegee needed a last-minute touchdown to secure the win and its spot in the playoffs for the second-straight season. Both VSU and Tuskegee will host playoff games on Saturday, a first for both programs.
In the FCS ranks, Week 12 was full of upsets from start to finish.
It started on Thursday, when two-time defending MEAC Champion Bethune-Cookman lost 40-35 to a Hampton team that had just been blown out by North Carolina Central. The loss was BCU's second in three weeks, leaving South Carolina State and North Carolina A&T as the only teams with one loss in conference play.
South Carolina State was next on the upset list. SCSU came up against a Morgan State team eagar to atone for its 45-0 meltdown against NC A&T the week before. The Bears exacted revenge for that embarassment, coming away with a 24-21 win in Orangeburg, something they hadn't done since 1972.
The upsets weren't limited to the MEAC, either. Grambling came into Saturday's game against Alabama State on a seven game winning streak only to see it snapped by a determined ASU squad in a 37-23 loss. The G-Men will have to wait two weeks to redeem themselves when they meet archrival Southern in The Bayou Classic to decide who will represent the SWAC West in the conference title game.
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