Lambeau Field has hosted Bart Starr’s sneak, Brett Favre’s arm, and approximately 70 years of frozen Decembers. Tonight, it hosts a football program that isn’t the Green Bay Packers.
Notre Dame and Wisconsin lock horns at 7:30 p.m. ET this Sunday, the first college game at Lambeau since Wisconsin’s 2016 win over LSU.
Same kickoff time, about 700 miles south, Nissan Stadium opens a new tradition of its own with the first Music City Kickoff featuring Ole Miss against Louisville, marking the first Sunday primetime college football game the building has ever hosted.
The NFL, however, doesn’t start until Wednesday.
College Football Games Today: Sunday’s Full Schedule
No. 4 Notre Dame faces Wisconsin at 7:30 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock, part of Notre Dame’s Shamrock Series. The Badgers haven’t played at Lambeau since a 2016 win over LSU, and they enter this one in their fourth season under head coach Luke Fickell.
At the same hour, No. 9 Ole Miss meets No. 24 Louisville at 7:30 p.m. ET on ABC, a rematch of the 2021 Kickoff Game, which Ole Miss won 43-24. Ole Miss enters the year under new head coach Pete Golding.
Rounding out the day, unranked Washington State visits No. 17 Washington at 4 p.m. ET in the Apple Cup, the earliest kickoff of the three games and the only one not built around a neutral-site made-for-TV setup.
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Neutral-site season openers like these have become a fixture of college football’s Labor Day weekend, giving programs a national showcase and additional revenue outside their usual home slate.
The Notre Dame-Wisconsin game was originally scheduled for 2020 as part of a two-game series before the pandemic forced a postponement, pushing it six years down the road to tonight.
Notre Dame enters off a 10-2 regular season that still wasn’t enough to reach the College Football Playoff. The Irish were left out of the field and withdrew from their Pop-Tarts Bowl bid entirely, giving the Lambeau Field matchup an edge beyond the venue’s novelty.
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NFL Week 1 Schedule: What to Watch Out For
Tonight marks the handoff point between college football’s opening weekend and the NFL season. The Patriots and Seahawks open the regular season Wednesday, September 9, at 8:20 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock, a rematch of Super Bowl LX.
The 49ers and Rams follow the next night in Melbourne, Australia, streaming exclusively on Netflix in the league’s first regular-season game on Australian soil.
Sunday, September 13 carries the bulk of Week 1, with FOX airing Bears at Panthers, Buccaneers at Bengals, and Saints at Lions at 1 p.m. ET, before NBC’s Sunday Night Football debut of the season sends the Cowboys to the Giants.
Denver at Kansas City closes the week Monday night on ABC and ESPN, a rematch loaded with stakes after the Broncos won the AFC West at 14-3 while the Chiefs fell to 6-11 the year before.
For tonight, though, college football still owns the calendar, and it’s doing it in two buildings that were never designed to host a college football game in the first place.
