FILE PHOTO

N.C. A&T football coach Rod Broadway leads to the Aggies into Saturday's Celebration Bowl against Alcorn State in Saturday's Celebration Bowl against Alcorn State.

N.C. A&T football coach Rod Broadway sees the Aggies in Alcorn State’s Braves.

Run the ball. Stop the run. Limit game-changing errors.

The Aggies and Braves, who play in the Celebration Bowl Saturday in Atlanta (noon, ABC), have many similarities. Broadway and Alcorn State coach Jay Hopson were assistants at Florida 20 years ago, so they’re familiar in approach.

“They’re very similar to us as far as what they do,” Broadway said. “Alcorn’s coach and I were on the same staff at Florida in ’95. I think his philosophy is somewhat similar to mine in that they’re going to run the ball and they’re going to try to stop the run defensively and try to make as few mistakes as possible.”

A&T (9-2, 7-1 MEAC) earned a share of the league title for the second straight year, just like Alcorn State (9-3, 7-2 SWAC). Both teams have dynamic running attacks – the Aggies are powered by all-America tailback Tarik Cohen; the Braves have Darryan Ragsdale. Success on the ground will be paramount.

“We had a lot of success at Florida and that was our basic philosophy there except we scored a lot of points and we opened it up,” Broadway said. “We’re a lot more conservative than we were at Florida in that we’re going to shorten the game, we’re going to run the ball. It’s a formula that’s worked for us.”

Preparing for the Celebration Bowl has provided A&T with the added benefit of practice time that’s available only to teams playing in the postseason. While the Aggies’ MEAC rivals are prohibited from on-field activities for three months, A&T has what amounts to a three-month head start on spring drills.

“There’s a lot of benefits to playing a game,” Broadway said. Number 1, you get the chance to play in the first bowl game to kick off the bowl season on national TV and you get to be the face of A&T for three hours. The other thing is, as far as football’s concerned, it is a mini-spring practice. If this thing was in January, we could have up to a full spring practice. We had to cut back because of exams and end of semester things we had to do, but we got a lot of good work in that wouldn’t have had a chance to do. If you get three extra weeks in, that can only help you as far as development, especially young kids, so hopefully they take some steps forward as far as becoming good football players.”

While the merits of playing the Celebration Bowl – created by ESPN as a showcase of black college football – at the expense of competing in the FCS playoffs is debated, Broadway is focused on preparing A&T for the experience.

“Our conference agreed to play in the Celebration Bowl. We’re excited about being the first participant in that bowl. All those decisions are above my pay grade and I’m just an old football coach trying to get my team ready to play in a bowl game and we’re excited about that opportunity.”

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