Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I wonder if I’ll become so football-crazed tomorrow that I’ll tune in for the “FCS Kickoff” game on ESPN between UC Davis and Mercer. 

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Almost time for kickoff

Yes, it’s only Aug. 22, but the college football season seriously starts tomorrow. With Labor Day falling on Sept. 1 this year, the week on the schedule traditionally known as Week Zero lands earlier than usual on the calendar. There’s only a handful of FBS games to act as an appetizer before the season gets started for real next week, but that small number of games means it’s easy to come up with a reason to pay attention to each one. 

No. 17 Kansas State vs. No. 22 Iowa State (noon ET on ESPN)

The Farmageddon rivalry is going international, with the Wildcats and Cyclones set to meet at Aviva Stadium in Dublin, the home of Ireland’s national soccer and rugby teams. 

The unorthodox setting alone should be enough of a fun wrinkle to earn your attention, but this is also one of the biggest Week Zero games in history and certainly the biggest in recent memory. Early examples of games between ranked opponents this early in the season include No. 1 Nebraska vs. No. 4 Penn State in 1983, No. 1 Auburn vs. No. 10 Miami in ’84 and No. 16 Iowa vs. No. 17 Tennessee in ’87. But since the NCAA resumed scheduling Week Zero games in 2016, only six ranked teams have played this early in the season, and none of them have played each other. There’s only ever been one previous ranked conference game in August: No. 9 South Carolina vs. No. 21 Texas A&M in 2014. 

Kansas State and Iowa State both enter the season with Big 12 title aspirations, and after how neck and neck the conference title race was last year, both teams are well aware of how one loss can impact an entire season. 

UNLV vs. Idaho State  (4 p.m. ET on the Mountain West Network)

Dan Mullen’s first season in Las Vegas is going to be one of the most interesting coaching storylines to watch this season—and it gets started with a tuneup against a perennially mediocre FCS team.

The game itself shouldn’t be terribly interesting (the sportsbooks have the Rebels as a 26.5-point favorite), but at least you can stream it for free on the Mountain West Conference’s website.  

The real reason to watch is to take stock of all the familiar names on the UNLV roster. Mullen and his staff hit the transfer portal hard after he was hired to replace Barry Odom, who now coaches Purdue. The Rebels have 56 transfers on their roster, and many of them come to the desert with high-level college football experience. The list includes former Michigan quarterback Alex Orji, former Alabama and Georgia safety Jake Pope, former Virginia quarterback Anthony Colandrea (who spent two seasons as the Cavaliers’ starter) and former Florida and Pittsburgh receiver DaeDae Reynolds. 

Mullen added 33 players with Power Four experience this offseason. Add that to a handful of holdovers already on the roster and the Rebels have 37 players who previously played at power-conference schools. That’s more than double any other Mountain West school, according to CBS Sports. It’s a talented team that could follow in Boise State’s footsteps as an MWC playoff contender. 

So take some time to familiarize yourself with the roster tomorrow afternoon. I have a feeling some of the players will still be doing the same. 

Kansas vs. Fresno State (6:30 p.m. ET on Fox)

Kansas’s Jalon Daniels is such a classic type of college football player. He’s a fairly undersized quarterback (6'0", 220 pounds) with elite athleticism to slice through defenses on option plays and extend plays in the backfield, as well as an arm that, while likely not NFL caliber, is nothing to sneeze at. He’s a lot of fun to watch. 

This will be Daniels’s sixth college season, all with the Jayhawks. We’ve seen plenty of players take advantage of the extra COVID-19 year of eligibility to have Bluto Blutarsky-length college careers, but very few of them have remained at one school the whole time. It’s been an up-and-down career for Daniels, though. The Jayhawks went winless in his freshman season, during which Daniels started six games. He was excellent as a junior (a 66.1% completion rate with 18 touchdowns and just four interceptions in nine games) as the Jayhawks snapped a 14-year bowl drought. But a back injury limited him to just three games the following year, and then last year he threw 12 interceptions, tied for the most of any power-conference QB. Seven of those picks came during the Jayhawks’ early-season five-game losing streak. 

If Kansas is going to rebound from last year’s disappointing 5–7 finish and get back to a bowl game, it starts with Daniels. 

Western Kentucky vs. Sam Houston (7 p.m. ET on CBS Sports Network)

Iowa State–Kansas State isn’t the only big conference clash on the docket this weekend. The Bearkats and Hilltoppers will open their season with a matchup of Conference USA contenders. 

Both teams went 6–2 in conference play last season, but WKU’s win on the road over Sam Houston in October gave the Hilltoppers the tiebreaker and a trip to the conference title game, where they lost to Jacksonville State. 

Western Kentucky is among the favorites for the conference title this season. CUSA eschewed the usual preseason media poll in favor of a “bowl confidence index” this year, and WKU was one of two schools picked by all 24 panel participants to make a bowl. (Liberty was the other.)

The road back to the top of the conference will be tougher for the Bearkats, who lost coach K.C. Keeler to Temple. The new head coach is Phil Longo, who was the offensive coordinator at Sam Houston about a decade ago when the Bearkats were still in FCS. He then held the same role at a trio of Power Four schools before returning to Huntsville. 

Hawai‘i vs. Stanford (7:30 p.m. ET on CBS and Paramount+)

Do you want to see a trainwreck? Stanford could be in for an ugly season. 

The Cardinal have gone 3–9 in four consecutive seasons, and there’s no reason to believe this will be the year they turn things around. Coach Troy Taylor was fired in March amid two school investigations into allegations he bullied female staff members. (Taylor has said that he was terminated without cause and called the media’s coverage of the firing unfair.) Andrew Luck, who was hired as the program’s general manager in November, brought in his former Colts coach Frank Reich as the interim head coach a week after Taylor was dismissed. 

Taking over a program less than five months before the start of the season is a tough task, especially when that program has been as lousy in recent years as Stanford has been. The bad news for the Cardinal is that any potential turnaround this season will have to be primarily the result of Reich’s coaching, not some massive influx of talent. Stanford added 17 transfers this offseason, the highest ever for the academically rigorous school, but not the kind of total facelift that other teams go through. The program also saw 28 players transfer out. 

Things haven’t been great for Hawai‘i lately, either. The team hasn’t made a bowl game since 2020 and is 13–25 over the past three seasons. But the Rainbow Warriors are actually the betting favorite in this one, which tells you something about how low the expectations are for Stanford this season. 

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5. Jewell Loyd’s ballhandling on a nice drive to the rim. 
4. Roman Anthony’s bat flip after his upper-deck homer in his first game at Yankee Stadium. 
3. The minor leaguer who broke his bat on a checked swing that didn’t even make contact with the ball. 
2. A beautiful diving stop by Astros first baseman Christian Walker. 
1. An outrageous individual effort by TCU’s Emma Yolinsky for one of the best goals you’ll see in any soccer game.


This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | One Reason to Watch Each Week Zero Game.