The Season Starts Three Times This Year, and Only One of Them Counts

Week Zero, Week 1, and everything New Mexico fans need before kickoff

We told you back in the preview that the college football map looked like a raccoon drew it. Good news: the map hasn't improved. Better news: the games start Thursday.

Here's the thing nobody explains well. College football doesn't have an opening day anymore. It has an opening fortnight, staggered across three separate Thursdays and two Saturdays, and if you don't know which one is which you'll spend Thursday night watching Mercyhurst and wondering where Ohio State is.

So let's sort it out.

Thursday, Aug. 27: the soft opening

Eight games. All of them FCS. Almost all of them on ESPN+.

Mercyhurst at Youngstown State kicks the entire 2026 season off at 6 p.m. Eastern, which is 4 p.m. our time. Also on the board: Maine at Towson, Chattanooga at West Georgia, Charleston Southern at Lindenwood, Southern Illinois at West Florida, Mississippi Valley State at Nicholls, Gardner-Webb at Austin Peay, and Central Arkansas at UT Martin.

Is this a massive slate? No. Is it football on a television after eight months without? Yes.

Saturday, Aug. 29: Week Zero proper

This is the one that matters this week, and there's a New Mexico angle right at the center of it.

• North Carolina vs. TCU, noon ET, ESPN, from Aviva Stadium in Dublin. TCU is favored by 7.5.
• San José State at No. 14 USC, 3 p.m., NBC. USC by 38.5, so watch the first quarter and then go do something outdoors.
• Alabama State vs. Southern, 3 p.m., ESPNU, at Legion Field in Birmingham — the MEAC/SWAC Challenge, and genuinely one of the better atmospheres of the entire weekend.
• NC State at Virginia, 3:30 p.m., ESPN.
• Sacramento State at Eastern Michigan, 6:30 p.m.
• New Mexico State at Florida State, 7 p.m. ET, The CW. We'll get to this.
• Memphis at UNLV, 10 p.m. ET, FOX. Late-night Mountain-time football. Set the recliner accordingly.

Aggies in Tallahassee

New Mexico State opens the season Saturday at Florida State. Let's be honest about what this is: a guarantee game, on the road, against an ACC program, in August humidity that would make a green chile roaster ask for a break.

But it's the first NMSU football anyone in this state sees all year, it's on a free over-the-air network, and the Aggies' home opener follows a week later on Sept. 5 against Mercyhurst on ESPN+. Watch it for the roster tells, not the scoreboard.

Thursday, Sept. 3: the actual season

Now the wall of games arrives. Week 1 runs Thursday, Sept. 3 through Monday, Sept. 7, with the first full Saturday on Sept. 5.

The headliner, per both CBS Sports and Sports Illustrated, is Clemson at LSU. Everything else stacked around it:

• No. 24 Louisville vs. No. 9 Ole Miss in Nashville, Sunday, 4:30 p.m., ABC
• Wisconsin vs. No. 4 Notre Dame at Lambeau Field, Sunday, 4:30 p.m., NBC
• Washington State at No. 17 Washington — the Apple Cup, Sunday, 1 p.m., NBC
• Colorado at Georgia Tech, Thursday, Sept. 3, ESPN
• Boise State at No. 2 Oregon
• Fresno State at USC, Friday night
• Miami vs. Stanford, Friday, Sept. 4, 9 p.m. ET
• Baylor vs. Auburn in Atlanta
• Texas State vs. Texas, Sept. 5, ESPN
• No. 19 SMU at Florida State, closing out the week

Five days. That's the calendar from hell we warned you about.

The Lobos wait their turn

New Mexico opens Sept. 5 against Central Michigan in Albuquerque at 8 p.m. MDT. A Saturday night home opener in early September is about the best draw the schedule-makers could have handed this program.

The rest of the early slate: Mercyhurst at home Sept. 12, then a trip to No. 9 Oklahoma on Sept. 19. And mark this one now — the Rio Grande Rivalry goes Sept. 26 in Las Cruces on CBS Sports Network.

One more thing worth noting for the "nobody respects us" file: New Mexico picked up 4 points in the preseason AP poll.

The Coaches Poll, and the number that should worry Ohio State

Ohio State is the preseason No. 1 with 38 first-place votes. But look at No. 6.

Indiana has 14 first-place votes while sitting sixth. That is a poll screaming two different things at once: the coaches don't agree, and a meaningful bloc of them think the Hoosiers win the whole thing. Ohio State has more total support. Indiana has more true believers.

The AP writers see it differently, as usual. AP has Ohio State first, Oregon second, Georgia third, Notre Dame fourth, Texas fifth, Indiana sixth. The bigger split is Clemson: 23rd in the Coaches Poll, and completely unranked by AP, sitting on 112 points in "others receiving votes." Which makes Clemson at LSU on Sept. 5 a referendum on which set of voters was paying attention.

Four rule changes that will confuse you live

Every year there are new rules, and every year fans learn them the hard way at 9 p.m. on a Saturday. Get ahead of it.

Targeting is now tiered. A player ejected for targeting is still gone for that game, but the automatic carryover suspension is dead. First offense: no next-game penalty. Second offense in the same season: miss the first half of the next game. Third: miss the entire next game. It's a one-year experimental rule for 2026.

Offensive pass interference is now 10 yards, not 15. Small change, real consequences on third down.

The fair catch kick exists now. After a completed or awarded fair catch, a team may attempt a free field goal from that spot — place kick with a holder and no tee, or a drop kick. It's worth 3 points, and the defense has to stay 10 yards back. Somebody will try this in a tie game and the internet will lose its mind.

Punt formations got stricter. If a team uses jersey-number exceptions, those five players must line up in a two-by-two formation around the snapper, inside the tackle box, as the initial formation. No shifting into it, no disguising it.

The playoff math, briefly

The Playoff stays at 12 teams for a third straight year. The change for 2026 is who's guaranteed in: the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC champions all get automatic bids regardless of ranking, plus the highest-ranked team from the Group of Six — American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac-12 or Sun Belt — whether or not that team won its conference.

That last clause is the one Mountain West fans should tattoo somewhere visible. A Boise State type doesn't have to win the league to get in; it has to be the best-ranked team in the entire Group of Six. Which is exactly why Boise State at Oregon on opening weekend is worth more than a typical body-bag game.

Expansion talk isn't dead — ESPN has been floating a 16-team field with four play-in games for seeds 13 through 16, which would effectively put 20 teams in the conversation. That's a 2027 problem. Thursday is a this-week problem.

Kickoff is Thursday. The map still looks like a raccoon drew it. Enjoy every minute.