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Yep, Week 0 college football starts today. Division I, in fact. Weekend schedule below.

We’re Back: Expect surprises, forever

Entering any given season, lots of things feel certain. Of course conference favorites will win their leagues. Of course flawed teams outside the top 10 won’t make postseason pushes. Of course the Heisman will go to the biggest-name QB.

Four months later, we look back and think: Of course preseason No. 20 Indiana was always going to win the Big Ten and everything else, thanks in large part to the imported quarterback of a 6-7 Cal team.

OK, extreme example. Maybe the most extreme ever. The point stands, though. Last year, most FBS conference favorites didn’t win their leagues. Exceptions: Boise State, JMU and Tulane.

Portal-era madness, right? Well, I looked back a decade prior at 2015, when FBS’ only league favorites to follow through were Alabama and Arkansas State. Having found evidence in favor of my eternal theory that CFB rarely changes as much as we think, I decided against pushing my luck by checking another season.

With these things in mind, when making this season’s predictions, I barred myself from picking any teams that are projected in their conference’s tippy-top tiers. That led me to this Playoff prediction:

1. Notre Dame: Ha! I can pick one of the best contenders without breaking my rule! Lifehack! I’m taking this team to win everything, apparently giving me a lot in common with its fans.
2. Indiana: Ha! I can pick the defending national champion because it’s a clear third in the AP Top 25 among Big Ten teams! The exercise got way harder after this. See:
3. Ole Miss: No. 6 in the SEC, per BetMGM. But QB Trinidad Chambliss is the player I believe in the most, and I like a roster that spent the last eight months angry at the same thing (Lane Kiffin) together.
4. Ohio State: Remember, the CFP seeds teams purely by ranking, with top-four byes no longer only for conference champs. As you can see, the middle of the bracket is where I put obvious teams.
5. Georgia: Obvious.
6. Oregon: Obvious, but pretty low for the AP No. 2 team I described on Tuesday as long overdue for a championship.
7. Texas: You know, one of these obvious teams probably won’t make it, based on history. Which one? Back to surprises:
8. BYU: My Big 12 champ, since I couldn’t pick Texas Tech … but also maybe even if I could?
9. LSU: I filled in my predictions back when it looked like Kiffin might import the Seattle Seahawks roster, but let’s roll with it.
10. Texas Tech: The Big 12 being a two-bid league might require the Red Raiders to go 12-1, based on their weak schedule, but their odds of making it are just so high.
11. Virginia Tech: As discussed in this newsletter, picking anyone besides Miami to win the ACC feels ridiculous, but my rule was ironclad. James Franklin has a rough conference schedule, and BetMGM’s win total is 6.5, but I’m betting on the vibes.
12. New Mexico: My rule banned teams like Boise State, James Madison, UNLV and seemingly half of the American. Jason Eck’s Lobos improved from 5-7 to 9-4 in Year 1, then had relatively great (by G6 standards) retention.

I’m not alone in picking the Irish to win their first title since 1988, as they were the most popular pick in our staff’s season predictions. Our readers, however, went with Oregon … and Austin Mock’s math prefers Ohio State. Wide-open season! (Cue “oF cOuRsE tHe MeDiA lOvEs NoTrE dAmE.” Clearly, my media bias is in favor of New Mexico.)

Among the other group predictions in that roundup, I picked the Buckeyes to reach the title game (a rematch of two years ago), accidentally made a popular pick by taking Jeremiah Smith to win the Heisman and wasn’t the only Lobos voter, though I’m alone on the Hokies.

We were also asked to deliver bold predictions, so I went with: “Lincoln Riley doesn’t have to play rival Notre Dame, but his last game at USC will be a loss to rival UCLA.”

The most adventurous prediction in there comes from our Matthew Ho: “Texas misses the Playoff, and Arch Manning enters the transfer portal after a lackluster season instead of entering the NFL Draft. He heads to Florida under Jon Sumrall.” Now we’re cooking.

See 29 other powerful proclamations, plus many other season previews on the site, including:

• An impressive, one-click rundown of all 138 FBS teams. Yes, I did the same thing as you, scanning straight to my alma mater. Seth Emerson described my Kennesaw State Owls fairly.
• Speaking of wide-open, in more detailed Playoff picks by Bruce Feldman, Stewart Mandel and Ralph Russo, each picked a different national champ, adding Indiana and Texas to our mix.
• Here are Austin’s statistical Playoff odds on all of FBS, from Texas Tech (72 percent chance of making the bracket) to UMass (technically not 0). This link will update all season.
• Annual reminder: Betting on the Heisman in August is a ludicrous idea. “The only preseason favorite in the past 16 years to walk away with the trophy was Marcus Mariota.”
• New mock draft by Nick Baumgardner. You know, if the Browns were to have the No. 1 pick, Arch should just transfer to Florida regardless.
• Good time to catch up on which players have transferred where! The biggest roster changes you wisely ignored.
• And yes, Boise State is in the Pac-12 now. Realignment refresh! The G6’s geography is suddenly disgusting.

Now for some news and stuff, and then … a much bigger (and more imminent) Week 0 schedule than you might realize.

Quick Snaps

👸 First, three of my three favorite Dolly Parton things I’ve read this week:

• A 15-song playlist, detailed. I grew up in the South, but not on country music, so this week’s listening has felt like investigating what’d always been omnipresent.
• “From savant to country music punchline to memefied global icon.” My former colleague Natalie Weiner’s three short essays on the early, middle and latter years.
• And that time Dolly congratulated Three 6 Mafia for winning an Oscar at her expense, praising the Memphis rap vanguards for bringing it home to Tennessee.

🚫 On a less reverent note, it’s time to summarize the latest roster business. Maybe for the last time before the presumed January portal! Wouldn’t that be nice?

• The Big Ten and SEC have been joined by other conferences (Big 12, Sun Belt, likely others) in banning players with “pro” and/or “draft” aromas. An era of boutique rule enforcement by conferences? (Reminds me of cable TV dissolving into 19 streaming apps. It’d be cool to combine it all back into cable TV. We could call it the NCAA.)
• LSU, the employer of both Kiffin and Will Wade, is the SEC school that might not love those bans? I can’t believe it.
• Per the surely befuddled NFL: You can’t get drafted (or sign a UDFA deal), return to college and try to get drafted again.
• As Stew explains in his new mailbag, the NCAA has to grit its way through this mess, caused by 2025 seniors reasonably wanting to be grandfathered into June’s announcement of five-year eligibility.

📰 Other news:

• ESPN’s removing the bottom-line ticker from college football game broadcasts. Let’s see how long that lasts.
• The NCAA has halved its suspension of a Tennessee linebacker who wasn’t part of April’s NFL Draft.

🎨 In an era of AI garbage, this is cool as hell: The Idaho Vandals enlisted a student to create oil paintings as weekly game graphics.

🎤 Athens, Ga., is known for live music. The loudest guy with a mic, however, is Kirby Smart during practice.

The Watch Grid: Full circle (and very full sched) for Week 0

In 2014, ESPN assembled an Aug. 23 game between Eastern Washington and Sam Houston State, a lone FCS showcase set days before FBS’ opening Thursday.

It was an instant hit, so North Dakota State-Montana would be 2015’s version. (Months later, NDSU beat Jacksonville State for the FCS title. This will be relevant.) Then in 2016, Cal-Hawaii joined alongside the third annual FCS kickoff, truly establishing the modern Week 0.

(A smattering of early games was briefly a thing in the mid-2000s, and Nebraska waxed Penn State in an August 1983 standalone, but neither altered the sport’s calendar like Week 0, which might just become Week 1.)

From 2017 onward, Week 0 began sprawling annually, all the way up to this weekend’s dozens of games, including eight in FBS on Saturday.

Two FCS teams that each played twice in those mid-2010s kickoff games, the foundations upon which Week 0’s annual pre-buffet was built: North Dakota State and Jacksonville State. And now look at them, playing each other in Week 0, both as FBS teams.

On that note, what follows is the Watch Grid, a schedule guide I’m going to share with you each week. It’s from the same ugly spreadsheet I’ve been editing and screenshotting since 2016. Readers have told me they like it, for reasons that mystify me. In 2021, its weekly Sickos Game of the Week honor, which spotlights football intended only for the hardiest of viewers, spawned the Sickos Committee.

The Watch Grid only cares somewhat about things like team quality or rankings ramifications. Instead, it’s my guesstimate of which games will be most watchable in each time slot. If your team isn’t rated highly, it’s probably because your incredible squad will win a boring blowout.

So here we go. I think this is the top-to-bottom best Week 0 ever. I won’t usually include nearly this many non-FBS games, but after an offseason of courtroom crap, we deserve to explore the country:

Tonight and tomorrow, Central Arkansas-UT Martin and Idaho-Cal Poly pit closely matched teams that could make FCS playoff runs. Also tonight, Ferris State (Mich.)-Pittsburg State (Kan.) might be the Division II game of the year, in case you happen to have access.

As for Saturday:

• Another instant referendum on Bill Belichick, again delivered by TCU (-9.5). This time, UNC’s roster isn’t as heavy on the exited Michael Lombardi’s dubious transfers, but has loads of Lombardi-approved freshmen. A bad loss in Ireland would have everyone wondering: Tar Heels interim Bobby Petrino?
• In the middle might be your best chance all year to look at the Fargodome’s FBS era. Long-awaited, yet risky. (Why not spotlight USC there? Because the Trojans are 39.5-point favorites. Have fun, if that’s how you party.)
• Remember last year’s Week 0, when nobody expected anything of Stanford-Hawaii, but we got one of the season’s best games?
• As for those two Sickos games: Valparaiso (Ind.) could be FCS’ worst team, but opponent Lawrence Tech (Mich.) ranks 301 spots lower in Bill Connelly’s 771-team ranking. Also, FCS power South Dakota State might be better than dozens of FBS teams, while FCS lightweight Stetson (Fla.) might be worse than a dozen NAIA teams. 😬
• And this weekend’s most consequential game might not involve Belichick. In December, maybe we look back on Memphis-UNLV (-4.5) as the game that decides the final Playoff spot.
• Also, did you notice there’s a Sunday game on TV?

More FCS: What to know about this season. Defending champ Montana State intends to take NDSU’s place.

Speaking of Sunday, see you that morning for my first postgame newsletter since January.

And give “The Audible” a watch or listen for more Week 0 picks.

Love Until Saturday? Check out The Athletic’s other newsletters, too.

European champions Paris St-Germain will face Premier League duo Manchester City and Aston Villa as well as five-time winners Barcelona in the league phase of this season’s Champions League.

The back-to-back Champions League winners will welcome Barca to Parc des Princes, while they were also handed trips to Villa Park and Manchester in the draw for the league phase.

Premier League champions Arsenal, meanwhile, will host 15-time winners Real Madrid at Emirates Stadium, and have also been handed a trip to Bayern Munich.

Mikel Arteta’s men, who were beaten by PSG on penalties in the final last season, will face Borussia Dortmund, Real Betis, Lille, Napoli, Azerbaijan champions Sabah and Slavia Prague as well.

Enzo Maresca’s City will welcome PSG to Etihad Stadium and travel to Barcelona, where they will have a reunion with Spanish World Cup-winner Rodri, who moved to the Nou Camp in a £65m deal this summer.

City will also be up against another of their former midfielders in Kevin de Bruyne when Napoli visit Manchester, with Sporting, Porto, RB Leipzig, AEK Athens and Lens their other opponents.

Europa League winners Villa, returning to the competition after a season away, will host PSG and Dortmund and travel to Barcelona and Galatasaray.

Unai Emery’s side also face Club Brugge, Fenerbahce, Viking and Slavia Prague.

Manchester United, returning after a two-year hiatus, will meet Bayern, Atletico Madrid, Roma, Sporting, Leipzig, Villarreal, Sabah and Como.

Liverpool, meanwhile, host Atletico, Porto, Villarreal and Lens while visiting Inter Milan, Brugge, Fenerbahce and LASK.

The first league-phase matches will be played on Tuesday, 8 September and the last round of games will take place on 27 January 2027, with the exact schedule to be released on Saturday.

This season’s final will be held in Madrid on 5 June.

Ukraine has lodged a formal complaint with the ethics committee of motorsport’s governing body the FIA following the decision to lift the ban on Russian competitors in international events.

The Ukrainian Automobile Federation (FAU) has requested an urgent investigation into its Russian counterpart, the RAF.

The ban on individuals from Russia and Belarus competing in international motorsport events had been in place since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The move was approved by the FIA world council, to which sources have told BBC Sport it was proposed by FIA president Mohammed ben Sulayem.

The FAU says the Russian Automobile Federation has “opened and continues to operate” offices in regions of Ukraine occupied by Russia – Crimea, the city of Sevastopol and the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts.

These are recognised by the United Nations as sovereign Ukrainian territory.

The FAU says these actions are in breach of both the FIA statutes and its international sporting code, which permit only one automobile club per country.

FAU president Oleksandr Feldman said: “This is a clear breach of the FIA statutes by the Russian Automobile Federation, which, as an FIA member organisation, is bound to comply with them.

“We urge the FIA president to take urgent action to have these offices closed, and for the Russian automobile federation to be sanctioned for its actions.”

The Ukrainian club has requested the FIA ethics committee find the RAF in breach of FIA statutes and order it to close the offices with immediate effect.

The statement also points out that the head of the RAF, Boris Rotenberg, is “directly subject to international sanctions imposed by the US, UK, EU, and other allied jurisdictions in response to aggression against Ukraine”.

The decision to lift the ban on Russian and Belarusian competitors followed a similar move by the International Olympic Association.

Following changes to the FIA statutes last year, the FIA ethics committee is under the control of Ben Sulayem and his ally the president of the senate, Carmello Sanz de Barros.

The FIA has been approached for comment.