College football Week 1 preview: 34 games to watch to kick off season - ESPN

Welcome to the Quadbox Life. A number of television providers have embraced multiview functionality, allowing you to watch up to four channels at once. You can now imbibe television like you're Marty Jr. in «Back to the Future Part II.» I love it. (My wife hates it.) An LSU game next to a Lehigh game! Ohio State-Michigan next to a Division III playoff game! Three Friday night games next to «Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives»!

Week 1 of the 2026 college football season offers a perfect opportunity to embrace Quadbox Life. Translation: We don't have a spectacular slate. We get only one ranked-versus-ranked battle, and it's on Sunday night. Even Saturday night's Clemson-LSU matchup was dampened by Clemson's 2025 collapse.

Here's a little secret, though: We don't need big games in Week 1! We're excited to have the sport back regardless, and for me, the best thing about Week 1 is the full information overload. We get partial answers about hundreds of teams. These games can be pretty sloppy, too, so it might be better that we have to wait until Week 2 and Week 4 for September's biggest matchups.

Each Friday, I preview the weekend, writing about headliners up top with a playlist, full of all the other games to track, at the bottom. Since there aren't any major headliners, let's create the entire column out of the playlist.

Here's everything you need to follow for this intensely quadbox-friendly Week 1.

No. 7 Miami at Stanford (9 p.m., ESPN). Stanford pulled the first great backdoor cover of the season last weekend, blowing a 16-point fourth-quarter lead over Hawai'i but scoring twice in the final two minutes to win 37-27. Sixth-year veteran Davis Warren threw for 310 yards, while the Cardinal defense limited Hawai'i's Micah Alejado