Prairie View A&M Panthers

The Prairie View A&M Panthers are a SWAC charter member and one of Texas's most historic HBCU programs, playing home games at Panther Stadium at Blackshear Field. Purple and gold Panthers teams trace their roots to the earliest days of Black college football, including hosting the first-ever HBCU postseason bowl game. Prairie View has been a perennial SWAC contender, and its 2025 title run brought the program back to the top of the conference after a long wait. Panther football carries over a century of Texas HBCU tradition.

Prairie View A&M has fielded football since the early 1900s and was a charter member of the SWAC when the conference formed in 1920. Under legendary coach Billy Nicks, the Panthers won eight SWAC titles and multiple Black college national championships in the 1950s and 1960s (1953, 1954, 1958, 1963, 1964), adding a national title again in 2009. Prairie View also hosted the Prairie View Bowl from 1929 to 1961, the first postseason bowl game played by an HBCU. The Panthers won their first SWAC championship since 2009 by upsetting Jackson State in 2025.