College Football

College football starts Thursday, Aug. 27 with a 13-game FCS slate, nearly all on ESPN+ – two days before FBS Week 0. Full schedule and season dates.

Head-to-head first, then every conference runs its own cascade – while the CFP committee uses no tiebreakers at all. Both systems, explained.

One window: Jan. 2-16 for all FBS and FCS players. The CFP five-day carve-out, the coaching-change exception, and why the spring portal is gone.

What is a redshirt? The 4-game rule, medical hardship waivers, grayshirts and blueshirts – and how the NCAA’s new 2026 eligibility model changes the math.

About 66 voters, 25 points to 1, updated weekly – how the AP Top 25 works, why the preseason poll keeps being wrong, and what it doesn’t decide (the CFP).

Belichick went 4-8 in year one at UNC. The full file: what broke, what changed for 2026, and why Saturday’s Dublin rematch with TCU is the first referendum.

12 teams, 5 auto-bids, straight seeding, byes for the top four and campus games in December – the full College Football Playoff format, explained.

SEC on ABC/ESPN, Big Ten split across FOX-CBS-NBC, weekly streaming exclusives – the full 2026 college football rights map and streaming decoder.

Notre Dame-Wisconsin at Lambeau on Sept. 6 is a COVID makeup six years in the making – with a Curly Lambeau-Knute Rockne twist. The full backstory.

Five straight seasons have opened in Dublin. The history from 1996 to the Aer Lingus Classic, the tourism economics, and why the Ireland game anchors Week 0.