College Football Week 1 Saturday: Notre Dame-Ohio State, Oregon-Georgia get headlines

On the first full Saturday of college football’s 2022 season (apologies to Northwestern and Nebraska fans), the sport kicks off with a top-five matchup and a second contest between teams ranked in the top 11 of preseason polls.

First up is the second of those two games, as #11 Oregon travels to the deep South to play #3 Georgia, the defending national champions. Although the game is technically at a neutral site, the contest taking place at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium will assure that the crowd will massively favor the Bulldogs in their big non-conference matchup. These two teams have met just once before, a 27-16 win for Georgia early on in the 1977 season.

Four hours later, the biggest game of kickoff weekend will begin as the second-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes host #5 Notre Dame in Columbus. These two programs have some recent history, playing in two Fiesta Bowls a decade apart after the 2005 and 2015 seasons. They also met in back-to-back years in the mid-1990s, with all four of those games going down as wins for the Buckeyes. The two legendary programs have met just two other times in their shared history, back in the 1930s, with Notre Dame earning victories as the overall head-to-head record stands at 4-2 in favor of Ohio State.

There is one other game featuring a pair of ranked teams on the schedule as #19 Arkansas hosts #23 Cincinnati in the mid-afternoon time slot. Otherwise, however, there will be plenty of ranked teams in action against non-conference opponents. For fans and alumni of the University Wisconsin, be sure to get your TVs cranked up in the evening as the Badgers host Illinois State at 6 PM Central to get the season underway.

Finally, there will be one notable game each on Sunday and Monday this weekend. On Sunday, LSU will play Florida State at the Superdome in New Orleans at 7:30 Eastern on ABC, while #4 Clemson opens their campaign against Georgia Tech at 8 PM Monday on ESPN.

Join us all day long in the comments here to follow along and discuss the first full weekend of the college football season!