The eighth Celebration Bowl will have a first-time winner this year.

Florida A&M and Howard are newbies to the annual event used to crown the de facto Black National Champion.

The two historically Black FCS conferences, the SWAC and MEAC, will send their champions to the Celebration Bowl rather than the FCS playoffs.

Money and exposure talks. There is a $1 million payout to each conference as well as a national television audience for the game and halftime battle of the bands.

A&M, located in Tallahassee, defeated Prairie View, Texas., for its first SWAC title.

The Rattlers are 11-1 with the lone defeat back on Sept. 9 to FBS South Florida.

Howard, 6-5, took the MEAC crown by upsetting North Carolina Central. Both Howard and Central finished 4-1 in the MEAC, with Howard getting the nod based on the head-to-head win.

The coaches: A&M’s Willie Simmons, a native of Tallahassee, is 44-13 overall and 32-5 in SWAC at his hometown school.

Howard’s Larry Scott, from Sebring, Fla., is 14-21 overall and 9-8 in the MEAC at the Washington, D.C., university.

The quarterbacks: The Rattlers’ Jeremy Moussa, a 6-foot-3, 225-pound grad student, previously played at Hawaii and Vanderbilt. The native Californian has passed for 2,604 yards and 19 touch- downs this season.

Quinton Williams, a 6-foot-5 grad student from Upper Marlboro, Md., has passed for 2,158 yards and 16 TDS, while also running for five scores.

Local connections: The Howard defense features defensive tackle Jamel Steward from Thomas Jefferson High and linebacker Christian White from Highland Springs.

Joe Taylor, currently the vice president for intercollegiate athletics at Virginia Union, coached at both of this year’s Celebration Bowl entries. He was Howard’s coach in 1983 and A&M’s coach from 2008 to 2012.

Legends: A&M has sent more than 50 players to the NFL, most notably NFL Hall of Famers’ Bob Hayes and Ken Riley.

Hayes, the Olympic 100-meter dash champ in 1964, went on to catch 371 passes with the Dallas Cowboys, good for 7,414 yards and 71 TDs.

Riley had 65 pass interceptions for the Cincinnati Bengals from 1969 to 1983.

Howard alum Ron Bartell made 353 NFL tackles for St. Louis, Oakland and Detroit from 2005 to 2013. Bartell is now the owner of Kuzzo’s Chicken & Waffles in his hometown of Detroit.

Some background: This is at least the third attempt by HBCUs to crown their own champion on the field, rather than in a poll.

Predecessors to the Celebration Bowl were the Pelican Bowl from 1972 to 1975 in New Orleans and the Heritage Bowl, 1991 to 1999 in Atlanta.