Watch the video above to learn more about the history of college football week 0 or keep reading. Check out The Touchback on YouTube for more videos.
This year college football week 0 turns 40. Like the tides ebb and flow, this random smattering of games has come and gone over the years with no real tradition to show for it. Basically, some schools play, some people watch and everyone moves on to September.
How did we get here? Why is this not week, week a thing? Let’s explore the history of college football week 0.
More Football: The 11 worst college football teams since 2010
The history of college football week 0
A strong start
College football week 0 dates all the way back to August 29, 1983 with the inaugural Kickoff Classic. A Monday night game at the Meadowlands saw defending national champions Penn State face off against the Nebraska Cornhuskers who were the top-ranked team in the country. Believe it or not, Lee Corso was doing color commentary.
However, it was not broadcast by a TV network. It was produced by Katz Communication who made it available to local markets via syndication. All told, 175 television stations would carry the game meaning roughly 90 percent of the country had access to it.
The Kickoff Classic and start of college football week 0 was unsurprisingly about money. Each school collected a cool $800,000 although both Nebraska Coach Tom Osborne, and Penn State Coach, Joe Paterno, wanted nothing to do with it. The game itself was a total blow out with the Cornhuskers winning 44-6.
A year later and schools were drooling all over themselves to participate in the Kickoff Classic. This time No.10 Miami took on top-ranked Auburn in Meadowlands. The second go-round was more competitive with a Tigers fumble late in the fourth quarter handing the Hurricanes victory.
In 1985 and 1986, Labor Day fell on September 2nd and then September 1st which kind of negated week 0. There was still a Kickoff Classic but several other games were also played on what would traditionally be considered week 1. For argument’s sake. This is non-cannon.
After a two-year hiatus, August 30th, 1987, saw the return of college football week 0 and one of the greatest contests to be played on the sport’s unofficial opening weekend. After a back-and-forth game, Tennessee kicked a last-minute field goal to beat Iowa.
This was a notable matchup for a few other reasons. It was the first time the contest had been played during the day. Additionally, it was the first time a national network broadcast the game with ABC beaming into homes across America.
A rival emerges
In 1990, a rival emerged to the Kickoff Classic…the Disneyland Pigskin Classic. Why everything needed to be a classic despite being a non-traditional concept with no history behind it is beyond me. Anyway, this matchup took place in Anaheim and immediately slotted in as the earliest game on the calendar.
The first contest happened on August 26, a 31-31 tie between No. 8 Tennessee and No. 5 Colorado broadcast on NBC. That was five days before the Kickoff Classic which had consigned itself to the last weekend in August which also happened to be Labor Day weekend.
By 1995, ABC had acquired the broadcast rights to both the Kickoff Classic and the Pigskin Classic, which had stopped being played in Anaheim and moved to be a traditional home game for one team. There was a game on Saturday and the other on Sunday. And this carried on until 2001.
Most of these matchups weren’t competitive by and large. This was due to a factor of teams not being quite ready to play and the weather almost always being miserably hot. However, the 1995 Pigskin Classic is the exception. True freshman quarterback Scott Dreisbach threw a touchdown pass to Mercury Hayes as time expired to give the Wolverines a victory.
The 1996 Pigskin Classic featuring BYU upsetting Texas A&M was also interesting. It also plays a prominent role in one of the NCAA’s dumbest loopholes. The Cougars were the first side in Division 1 history to play 15 games in a season. That was allowed because playing in the week 0 game and at Hawaii didn’t count against the schedule–we will talk a little more about the latter in a bit. They would play 13 regular season games as well as in the WAC Championship game and the Cotton Bowl.
From The Pac-12: Pac 12 stadium rankings: A collection of beautiful college football venues
Even more games
The 1997 Kickoff and Pigskin Classics featured a pair of brutal shutouts and was the final time they would hold a monopoly over the first weekend of college football. In 1998, the Eddie Robinson Classic and Black Coaches & Administrators (BCA) Classic joined the fray.
With cable TV widely available, there was no issue finding homes for the games. And late August isn’t exactly a hotbed of other sporting activity anyway. A fifth game would be added in 1999 and 2000 but things weren’t exactly going well.
Here are the scores of the losing teams that played during week 0 in the year 2000. Three. Seven. Three. Ten. Five. The highest-scoring loser that weekend? Mississippi Valley State against Louisiana Tech who put up 63 points. Four losing DI teams mustered a measly 18 points combined in defeat.
Things had gone completely pear-shaped by 2001. There were seven games during week 0 including a matchup on Thursday to get started. It was more of the same the following the year.
That is when the earliest start to a college football season occurred. Colorado State traveled to Virginia on August 22nd, 2002. What makes this unique is that the game was played on a Thursday night ensuring it kicked off before any other games…ever.
On an evening described by the Cavaliers’ official website as miserably muggy, Virginia lost with Matt Shaub throwing a costly interception. What a shock. Anyway, the author may have had a point about the weather, although they could have also been somewhat butthurt after falling to the Rams.
The first end
The NCAA had seen enough by 2002 and put the kibosh on what was still classified as “preseason games”. It should be noted that week 0 wasn’t called that until much later. These matchups were simply preseason festivities that for some reason counted toward the regular season standings.
Instead of having a loophole where programs could schedule 12 games by playing in the preseason that wasn’t or scheduling Hawaii, the NCAA changed that rule and allowed all teams to schedule that many. There were still a handful of previously scheduled week 0 contests in 2003 and 2004 but by 2005, it was wiped from the calendar. College football started on Labor Day weekend. Well the Thursday or Friday before it most years.
More College Football: What happened to the Outback Bowl? An ode to respectable sponsorship
Week 0 as we know it today
Thankfully, this isn’t the end of the history of college football week 0. It made a comeback due to the fact Australia wanted to host a college football game. Dubbed the Sydney Cup, the California Golden Bears ventured down under for a matchup against the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors. The teams requested to play a week earlier because of the time difference and jet lag involved.
The NCAA, an organization happy to oblige if they got paid, allowed it and week 0 was reborn. There was a second Australia game in 2017 but five other games also joined in on the fun. This was allowed because the NCAA dusted off the old Hawaii Rule and added a clause that stated any team that travels to play an away game against the Rainbow Warriors was now allowed to begin their season a week early.
More Hawaii: 5 things you may not remember about Aloha Stadium
Let’s talk about the Hawaii Rule. Firstly, it actually doesn’t directly mention the Rainbow Warriors by name and is called the Hawaii Rule because they are the only school to have used. Anyway, NCAA bylaws back in the day allowed any school with a road game at Aloha Stadium to play 12 games instead of the permitted 11.
This was done to allow those universities to play an extra home game to offset the costs involved with traveling to Hawaii. It should be noted that the actual rule itself covers any game played in Hawaii, Alaska or Puerto Rico. Alaska Anchorage Seawolves to revive football and move to FBS? Book it.
Prior to the week 0 amendment, teams that opted to play a 12th contest would forfeit a bye week. Of course, all that became irrelevant when every team was allowed to play 12 games. With all that out of the way, a fair number of Mountain West schools took up the Hawaii rule option in 2017 and 2018 but the trend had fizzled out by 2019.
Instead, we got ESPN flexing its muscle by having Florida and Miami face off in Orland to kick off the season. Despite the questionable waiver, it was a pretty good game and gave some shine to the idea of college football week 0.
A waiver was granted for any team to play during week 0 of 2020 but no one took them up and the offer given the general uncertainty of the time. The following year saw a few Mountain West schools take up the Hawaii rule while granting a few exemptions as well.
I went to both the San Jose State and Fresno State week 0 home games in 2021 and it was certainly and adventure. The Bulldogs game kicked off at 11 am which never happens on the west coast. And it really shouldn’t happen during August in Fresno. Just thinking about the heat as we all huddled together for a sliver of shade gives me nightmares. San Jose State was cool though.
Things got wild again in 2022 with a record 11 games. There was the usual compliment of Mountain West teams. Duquesne also took advantage of the Hawaii rule by playing their body bag game against Florida State during Week 0. Northwestern and Nebraska who faced off in Dublin also got permission and there were a few other waivers approved.
This year we are back down to seven contests for the unofficial opening weekend of college football. It’s not a particularly sexy lineup if we’re being honest. You have another game in Dublin as well as some schools exercising the Hawaii Rule. Barring some crazy result, no one will remember these games even took place in August.
And that kind of sums up the history of college football week 0 in a nutshell. It happens and it is kind of interesting. Ultimately though, it doesn’t really matter. That’s also what makes it enjoyable. You can watch college football without drowning in hype or people melting down on the Paul Finebaum Show.
That is a refreshing change in the otherwise seedy, scandalous world of college football.
Keep Reading: Loyalty & the college football transfer portal: A really bad argument
