Florida A&M and South Carolina State meet Sunday afternoon at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens for the 2026 Orange Blossom Classic, a rivalry dating back to 1973 that carries extra weight this year as FAMU makes its first appearance in the game since joining the SWAC. Kickoff is set for 3 p.m., with the game airing nationally on ESPN, with Tiffany Greene on play-by-play alongside analyst Jay Walker.

Both programs enter unbeaten. Florida A&M (1-0) opened its season with a 20-7 win over Albany State in Tallahassee, while South Carolina State (1-0) blew out Savannah State 87-0 in Orangeburg. The box scores from those openers could hardly look more different, and both head coaches spent their weekly media availabilities describing what that contrast means heading into Miami.

What is at stake

Florida A&M leads the all-time series against South Carolina State, 34-26-2, with the two programs first meeting in the Orange Blossom Classic back in 1973. The series has swung toward the Bulldogs more recently, however: South Carolina State holds a 7-5 edge in meetings since 2010. The Rattlers have won the last four meetings between the two, including a 22-18 decision in a season-opening matchup in Tallahassee in 2024, while South Carolina State’s most recent win in the series came by a 44-21 score before that stretch began.

A win would give first-year FAMU head coach Quinn Gray his second victory at the helm in Tallahassee, his 26th overall as a collegiate head coach, and the Rattlers’ first Orange Blossom Classic win since 2023. Gray, a FAMU letterman from 1997 to 2001, has never faced South Carolina State as a head coach at either Albany State or FAMU.

Miami Gardens is forecast for a high of 85 with a 22 percent chance of rain at kickoff, a factor both coaches addressed on their calls given the difference from each team’s home climate this time of year.

Florida A&M leans on a defense that lived in the backfield

FAMU’s 20-7 win over Albany State was built on its front seven. The Rattlers recorded 10 sacks for 54 yards, with Antonio Camon leading the way at nine tackles, five for loss and three sacks, and Paul Gatley adding two sacks for 11 yards on his own. Florida A&M held Albany State to 163 total yards and, after accounting for sack yardage, just three net rushing yards as a team.

Gray said the number undersells how well Albany State’s backs actually ran the ball. “The rushing yards are a little bit skewed with the sacks and all that good stuff,” he said. “I think they rushed for somewhere around 50 or 60, maybe even 70 yards, whatever the case may be. But due to the sacks counting as minus rushing yards, it was a little bit skewed. But I’m excited about the way they flew around and played with the effort and energy that we’ve been looking for all camp long.”

Quarterback Isaiah Knowles completed 14 of 23 passes for 190 yards and a touchdown in his FAMU debut, finding Maliek Denmark (two catches, 62 yards), Corey Petty (two catches, 42 yards) and Jaquan Lee, whose six catches for 25 yards included a touchdown. Jamal Hailey led the ground game with 54 yards on 16 carries. The offense was the slower half of FAMU’s opener, converting just 3 of 13 third downs, and Gray said fixing that starts with discipline rather than scheme. “Being more consistent and doing what we call sticking a jab,” he said of the fix. “Just got to stick to our rules and make sure we’re doing what we coach to do.” Asked what he wants from the run game specifically, Gray kept it short: “Just consistency and more physicality.”

Gray credited Knowles with being the offense’s steadying presence despite the slow start. “Isaiah’s been as consistent as he’s been since we’ve been together,” Gray said. “We trust him with the offense, and he has some things that we got to make sure we correct this past weekend, but for the most part, he’s our leader. The guys look to him as that, and we’ll continue to make sure that we get better in the areas that we need to.”

South Carolina State enters loaded after an 87-point statement

South Carolina State’s win over Savannah State was as complete a performance as a team can turn in: 627 total yards, 32 first downs, a 75 percent completion rate with no interceptions, and touchdowns on 11 of 11 scoring opportunities. The Bulldogs ran for 423 yards at 9.2 yards per carry, with Mason Pickett-Hicks (103 yards on 10 carries), Ricorian Brown (75 yards on seven carries), Josh Shaw (74 yards and three touchdowns on nine carries) and Tyler Smith (72 yards on five carries) all clearing 70 yards. Quarterbacks Keely Watson and Ronnie Robinson combined to go 18 of 24 for 204 yards and four touchdowns.

Head coach Chennis Berry said the balance across all three phases, not any single unit, was the story. “We found a way to go one and zero,” he said. “In this program we talk about playing 60 minutes of football, and I thought we did just that. I thought we executed hard and fast offensively. We’re pretty efficient offensively, and I thought our defense played really good football. They were sound. They stopped the run. That’s really what we try to do each and every week. Special teams, I thought we won the field position battle and did a really good job in our kicking game; our punters, our snappers, everybody did a good job. It’s not about the offense, not about the defense, not about special teams. It’s about the we, and our team did a good job of executing and accomplishing the mission.”

Berry pointed to the offensive and defensive lines as the foundation for a rushing attack that put four different backs over 70 yards. “At the end of the day, it all starts up front,” he said. “Any team in America, from Little League to the NFL, you’ve got to be sound up front. We hang our hats on that when we build our program. We talk about building the offensive line, defensive line, and our quarterback; build it from the inside out. All six of our running backs are super talented. They did a good job of running hard and taking advantage of their opportunity. We played every running back on our roster, and I thought they all did a really good job of executing.”

Despite the final score, Berry was not ready to call the performance clean. “They stopped us on third and short. They did a good job of that,” he said. “We didn’t tackle very well. We had too many penalties, and the reality is that when you have pre-snap penalties, those are the ones I’m not a fan of. We had three false starts, and we had one more pre-snap penalty. So all in all, we got to clean those things up.”

South Carolina State’s defense, which held Savannah State to 117 total yards and forced a Jabin Ford interception in the shutout, is built on depth, according to Berry. “We knew going into the season our defense was going to really be the strength of our team,” he said. “We’re deep on the defensive line. I think we played 12 defensive linemen this past Saturday. I think we’re pretty deep at linebacker, too. We have about eight linebackers that are extremely talented, and in our secondary I think we’re about three deep, super talented. If we can stop the run and win first and second down, we put teams into third and long situations, and now our guys up front can just go hunt.”

The matchup within the matchup

Both programs’ own numbers point to the same two fronts deciding Sunday’s outcome. Florida A&M’s pass rush, which produced 10 sacks in the opener, will test a South Carolina State offensive line that did not allow a single sack against Savannah State. In the other direction, the Bulldogs’ 423-yard rushing attack will run into a Rattlers front seven that limited Albany State’s backs to single digits on the ground. Third-down efficiency looms as a tiebreaker: South Carolina State converted 80 percent of its third downs in the opener against a Florida A&M defense that has already shown it can get teams off schedule.

Managing the heat and the roster

Both coaches were asked how they are preparing their teams for South Florida’s early-September conditions, and both pointed to the same answer: get ahead of it. “We’ve been preparing for that moment pretty much all training camp,” Berry said. “We understand it’s part of the game. The elements are going to be hot down in South Florida, but both teams got to play it. We’re gonna hydrate them, don’t wait till Saturday or Sunday to start hydrating, we’re gonna hydrate them now. We’re gonna make sure we get good conditioning in.”

Both coaches also described similarly deep rotations as a deliberate choice this early in the season rather than a product of the lopsided score in South Carolina State’s opener. “We play a lot of people too,” Berry said. “Especially early in the season, you’ve got to find out what kind of football team you have. So we don’t play just one group of guys. We play multiple guys.”

Despite the history between the two programs, both coaches downplayed added motivation from the rivalry itself. “Nothing changed for us,” Berry said. “Coach Gray, great man, he’ll have his team ready to go. A lot of tradition and history between the two programs over the years, and some proud alumni all over the country. It’ll be fun down here in South Florida. But our mission doesn’t change. We’re going to prepare for a good Florida A&M football team. It’s never about the opponent. We respect every opponent we play. It’s about us mastering us.” Gray struck a similar note when asked about the stage itself. “The Orange Blossom Classic is something that puts a lot more emphasis on it with it being on ESPN,” he said. “I think it’ll be great for exposure for HBCUs and both institutions alike. But at the end of the day, outside of all that, we got to go down and play a really, really good football game to be able to have the success that we plan on having.”