College Football Week 0 Schedule, Games Ranked

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When does the college football season start? When is Week 0 of the college football season? These are questions that search engines would like me to optimize for you.

Well, well, well.

Long time, no talk.

Never mind the horseshoes, it’s time to preview the main course—or, at least, to load up on bread before the meal gets here, we burp, and say “Fuck it, I’m on vacation.”

Whatever tortured metaphor

Sure, your team didn’t do a spring game—or maybe they did, I just can’t be bothered to care. Sure, I didn’t bother to finish the “every team gets a horseshoe” series. Does anyone write here anymore? Not really, but maybe? Don’t worry about it, unless you want that writer to be YOU! (Inquire within my inbox.)

But now that the calendar’s turned to “It’s July and SBNation yells at me if I don’t produce #content” o’clock (I’ve lost track of the metaphor), how about a look at the 2026 football season?

Here are all the Week 0 college football games of 2026, along with a rating—out of 5, because why not, it’s the Internet—for each. Division I only…for now. Only teams playing (1) a game that gets an NCAA waiver usually for an international game, and/or (2) Hawai’i in the 2026 season are supposed to have the option to flex out a Week 0 game. This year a number have taken the latter option, but that should give you a wall-to-wall, 12-hour viewing experience of your favorite sport.

And there definitely will be one, because FCS has moved its first week up games up to…well, Week 0. That’s right—you can watch Eastern Illinois-Murray State on Thursday night, then stick around for a full Saturday slate, including East Texas A&M-Mercer in the FCS Kickoff Classic (6pm, ESPN), Alabama A&M-Howard in the MEAC/SWAC Challenge Kickoff (6:30pm, ABC), or Prairie View-Tarleton in a boring ol’ non-conference game (8pm, ESPN2).

The Week 0 FBS Schedule

^{(All times CT. Duh.)}

North Carolina Tar Heels vs. TCU Horned Frogs
11am | ESPN | Aviva Stadium (Dublin, Ireland)

Last year in Chapel Hill, Sonny Dykes seemed to relish beating the brakes off the Tar Heels in the inaugural Bill Belichickapalooza.

This year, it’s almost an entirely new UNC roster facing a rebuilt TCU offense that stars…

…UConn’s offensive coordinator and Harvard’s quarterback.

That is a very real sentence that I just wrote in the Year of Our Lord 2026, and it genuinely got me excited for college football in a way that very little does anymore.

I want to see Sonny Dykes—with, to reiterate, Harvard’s quarterback and UConn’s offensive coordinator—hang half-a-hundo on Bill.

That said, it’ll probably rain and the wifi will go out and people will get free beer and the on-field product will probably be a shitshow. Long live Ireland.

Rating: 26+6=1(/5)

San Jose State Spartans at USC Trojans
2pm | NBC

The 2024 San Jose State run—out of the ashes of Brent Brennan leaving for Arizona—was something to behold.

And, in 2025, it fell apart for Ken Niumatalolo and the Spartans: bad bouncers, turnovers, and the usual lack of size and power doomed them to a 4-8 slog.

The off-season wasn’t kind, either: Coach Ken lost WR phenom Danny Scudero to Colorado and QB Walker Eget to Duke, and they’ll be hoping Hawai’i transfer QB Luke Weaver can sling it to whatever unknown wide receiver is going to burst onto the scenes for the Spartans.

I don’t like their odds against the Trojans at noon local time in the heat.

Why this game at this time, NBC? Surely you don’t have actual national content for that evening.

Rating: 1.5/5, though maybe the Spartans make this amusing in the “65-28 final score” way

NC State Wolfpack at Virginia Cavaliers
2:30pm | ESPN

This game was supposed to be in Rio de Janeiro! It no longer is! Why? Because some third-party scheduler announced it couldn’t happen! No more questions, thank you.

It almost feels like we’ve missed out on some Fyre Festival-esque ACC game where they’d arrive at the Maracana and the Fluminense youth team would be playing 5-a-side on the field and a very confused Brazilian official would inform ACC commissioner Jim Phillips that they’d never heard of “Athlete Advantage” and certainly didn’t have a contract with them.

This was originally an international game; it’s now just a boring old ACC game that got to keep its Week 0 waiver.

Rating: 2.5/5

Jacksonville State Gamecocks at North Dakota State Commuting From the Greater Barnesville Area for a Business Degree to Open a Crossfit Gym Bizon
4:30pm | CBSSN

These are both FBS teams now. You don’t have to like it, but there it is.

NDSU is new here, but their reputation and a trotline of FBS scalps precede them. Whether HC Tim Polasek and his cast of corn-fed thiccbois from the Northern Plains will adjust? Well, needing to replace the major skill positions does them no favors. It’s always been plug-and-play, though, and if you need a palate-cleanser after watching San Jose State and USC put, somehow, 10 wide receivers on the field each play, this is your game—watch as NDSU comes out in T formation on the first play of FBS life, just to make a damn point. They’ll be a fun contrast in the Mountain West, that’s for sure.

They’ll face another team who’s been a model of how to jump from FCS to FBS—the Gamecocks thrived with RichRod as their head man for two years, taking home a C-USA title, but now-second-year man Charles Kelly brought them right back to the C-USA title game with RB Cam Cook.

Cook’s reunited with RichRod in Morgantown, though, so we’ll see how Khristian Lando picks up the slack for the ‘Cocks alongside dual-threat QB Caleb Creel.

Two teams that can Run the Damn Ball, playing on what I’m sure will be a glorious Saturday afternoon in Fargo…LIVE from the FargoDome. At least the fans will be there and be loud—should be fun to see whether ol’ Nard Dog State’s home-turf advantage carries over to the big time.

Rating: 3/5

Sacramento State Hornets at Eastern Michigan Eagles
5:30pm | ESPN+

Now this—this is some disgusting shit.

I’m not sure why Sacramento State is here, but they are, proud members of the MAC.* I’m not sure how Eastern Michigan University is still solvent, but they are, clinging to life in Ypsilanti.
^{* Sac State, for some reason, plays a roadie at Hawai’i in November—hence the Week 0 eligibility.}

So of course, we should line them up and make them play football on a Saturday afternoon in August.

The Hornets are in a weird spot—HC Brennan Marion took his Go-Go Offense to be the OC at Colorado, meaning it’ll fall to first-year HC Alonzo Carter, who had been AHC/RB at Arizona. I would like to print for you, now, this fact about Alonzo Carter from Wikipedia:

While at Cal State Hayward, Carter responded to an audition call for backup dancers by MC Hammer. Carter would later forgo his final season of college football to tour with Hammer as one of his permanent dancers from 1988 to 1993, and served as one of the main choreographers for Hammer’s 1990 hit song “U Can’t Touch This“.

I’ve seen enough. Go Sacs.

Rating: 2 (Legit 2 Quit)/5

New Mexico State Aggies at Florida State Seminoles
6pm | The CW

Gross. No. Why.

Amusing things I learned while asking myself “Should I research this game?”

• Mike Norvell is still coach at Florida State
• NMSU does not yet have a 2026 season page on Wikipedia.

Rating: 1.5/5

Hawai’i Rainbow Warriors at Stanford Cardinal
6pm | ACCN

Stanford, which has been an absolute trainwreck since dumping David Shaw, as HC Troy Taylor turned out to be a bully—and not the fun kind—and interim HC Frank Reich was very clearly collecting a check while doing damage control for his buddy Andrew Luck (the GM at Stanford, of course). Hawai’i won at home last year, and this is the return leg. Stanford hasn’t gone bowling in seven years.

The Cardinal brought in program legend(?) Tavita Pritchard to be the head coach. Having quarterbacked the Cardinal from 2007-2008 before being replaced by Luck during the 2009 season, Pritchard climbed the ladder under Shaw, serving as OC and QB coach from 2018-2022. After 2018 the Cardinal bottomed out, but let’s ignore that for now, huh?

The man who molded K.J. Costello and Davis Mills—and some guy named Jayden Daniels, sure—is bringing pro-style back to The Farm for Michigan transfer QB Davis Warren and RB Micah Ford. That’s good news for a Cardinal program that’s been putrid on offense.

An equally-big problem, at least last year, was that Stanford couldn’t stop the pass. At all.

Anyway, anyone know anything about Hawai’i football?

Speaking of local quarterbacks-back-in-the-saddle, Timmy Chang’s finally figured it out in Manoa—and thank God for our ‘Bows. With Micah Alejado slingin’ and scamperin’ around, Hawai’i did its fun shit all over again. Pofele Ashlock is back at wide receiver, and surely there are a half-dozen more random dudes from the islands ready to zip around for a good time.

Rating: 4/5 — it’ll be good, but in the “Aw, they really shouldn’t be struggling with that team” kind of sense. (Talking about Hawai’i struggling with Stanford, of course.)

But for that pure, uncut Colombian…

Memphis Tigers at UNLV Rebels
9pm | FOX

Now THIS is what Week 0 games should be. Don’t even need a random international site for this one, just put it in Allegiant Stadium and tell Dan Mullen that a kid mowed a lawn without double-cutting it or something, and there’ll be more than enough to go around here.

New on the sideline for the Tigers, by the way, is Charles Huff—he of Marshall and then Southern Miss fame. Having engineered a pretty shocking winning season in Hattiesburg, he leapt for Memphis after coach Ryan Silverfield took the Arkansas job.

That’s not the only thing new—try basically the entire Memphis sideline. College Football News wondered whether we might see 22 transfers starting for the blue-and-grey, and that includes always-the-bridesmaid QB Air Noland, who’s now backed up both Julian Sayin and LaNorris Sellers or Southern Miss transfer Denzel Gardner. Regardless, the Tigers have the playmakers and deep threats that, if they gel with the quarterback, should make for a fun time.

And that’s good, because they’ll need it against Mountain West front-runners UNLV. Mullen’s squad had a lot of turnover in the off-season, including Anthony Colandrea heading to Nebraska to quarterback the Huskers, but Auburn transfer QB Jackson Arnold—just fine at both Oklahoma and Auburn—should have the Rebels’ offense good and chaotic, if not necessarily…uh…consistent?

Rating: 5/5 — and that’s perfect for Week 0.

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