Prairie View A&M won the SWAC last year. It opened this one at a top-five FCS program and plays at Baylor next week.
Look at the first four weeks of the Panthers' schedule in order.
Tarleton State entered the season ranked fifth in FCS and is in the running for a national title. Baylor is a Big 12 program. Stephen F. Austin is a Southland opponent. Conference play does not begin until Grambling State comes to Prairie View on September 26.
A defending conference champion built a September that could have been considerably softer and chose not to.
Head coach Tremaine Jackson has described this directly. He has told his team it has two schedules — one to win a national championship, and one to earn national respect — and named playing Tarleton State and East Texas A&M as belonging to the second.
That is an unusually clear articulation of something most programs leave implicit. Games serve different purposes. Some are on the schedule to be won. Some are there to be seen losing competitively to somebody good.
And some, like the trip to Waco, are there for a check.
The Baylor game is a guarantee game, the arrangement examined elsewhere on this wire: an FBS program pays an FCS program a fixed fee to travel and play at its stadium.
At least fifteen matchups between Division I HBCU programs and FBS opponents were scheduled this season, generating more than $6.9 million collectively. The Associated Press reported that high-profile matchups start around $500,000 and Group of Six opponents pay closer to $250,000.
That money does not fund the football team. It funds the athletic department.
Prairie View reached the Celebration Bowl for the first time in program history last season and lost 40–38 to South Carolina State in four overtimes. It won the SWAC by beating Jackson State 23–21 in the championship game.
Everything that follows in a season like that gets measured against it.
So the Panthers open 0–1, having lost to a top-five opponent by nineteen, with a rivalry game and a Big 12 road trip in the next seven days — and none of it counts toward the division. The SWAC West is decided starting September 26.
Quarterback Tevin Carter, who started four games last season, threw for 309 yards and ran for 130 more against Tarleton State. That is the number worth carrying into the conference schedule regardless of what the record says in mid-September.
After Grambling: at Mississippi Valley State, Southern at home, Alcorn State at home, at East Texas A&M, Alabama A&M at home, at Arkansas-Pine Bluff, at Alabama State.
Seven conference games from late September through late November, and by then the September results will matter mostly as film.
Schedule and results verified against the Sportradar match record. Coach's comments as reported by Yahoo Sports. Guarantee-game figures as reported by the Associated Press and HBCU Sports; the Baylor figure is not confirmed here.