The Heritage Bowl is a dormant Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) bowl game pitting 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 universities, but sometimes the conference champions declined the automatic bowl bid in order to participate in the Division I-AA playoffs instead. This was an especially common issue for the MEAC, often leaving its runner-up—or even its third seed, for the final two Heritage Bowls—to represent the conference. Because of the MEAC's unwillingness to guarantee that its champion would participate, the television contract was ended and eventually the game was too, even though attendance surpassed so