ESPN Reveals 2026 FCS-FBS Slate Including Tennessee State at Georgia

The 2026 college football nonconference calendar stacks several FCS programs into early-season Power Five road trips, with Tennessee State at Georgia among the most visible matchups. The weekend includes Youngstown State at Kentucky, Nicholls at Kansas State, Morgan State at Arizona State and Southeast Missouri State at Iowa State, with ticket prices and stadium assignments already visible for the Sept. 3-5 slate.

Sanford Stadium in Athens will host Tennessee State with tickets listed as low as $119. Youngstown State is slated for Kroger Field in Lexington with tickets as low as $51. Nicholls draws Bill Snyder Family Stadium in Manhattan with tickets as low as $109, while Morgan State is set for Mountain America Stadium in Tempe with seats advertised from $25. Southeast Missouri State will travel to Jack Trice Stadium in Ames with tickets as low as $81. The schedule excerpt also preserves an incomplete line reading simply "Indiana" and a separate ESPN row showing a blank visiting team at Maryland - items that will require follow up for full detail.

Beyond the FCS-FBS pairings, the national early slate carries other cross-division games such as Bethune-Cookman at UCF at Acrisure Bounce House, Idaho at Utah in Salt Lake City and Eastern Illinois at Minnesota in Minneapolis. Long Island University is listed at Kansas on Friday, Sept. 4, while the Saturday window includes additional one-offs like Abilene Christian at Texas Tech and New Hampshire at Syracuse.

The nonconference calendar has implications beyond a one-off payday. For FCS programs, these are high-revenue, high-exposure "money games" that also double as measuring sticks for roster depth and recruiting messaging. Central Connecticut State highlights that dynamic: "Highlighting the Blue Devils 2026 non-conference slate will be a September 19th trip to the 2025 FCS National Champion, Montana State. That is the first time in program history that the Blue Devils will take on a national champion. It is the first-ever meeting with the Bobcats and marks the first Blue Devil football game in the mountain time zone." CCSU also opens Week Zero on August 29 at South Dakota, "the first meeting in program history with Coyotes" and the first CCSU game in the State of South Dakota.

Conference scheduling innovations and playoff pecking order add context. A way-too-early College Football Playoff projection lists Miami, Notre Dame, Texas and Indiana atop the 2026 landscape, and marquee FBS matchups such as Louisville vs. Ole Miss on Sept. 5 are being framed as résumé-changers. The Pac-12 is redesigning its season with four nonconference games to start, a seven-game intra-conference slate and a Week 13 home-and-home flex window; Pac-12 Commissioner Teresa Gould said, “We can’t wait to kick off the new era of Pac-12 football. Today’s schedule release is a major milestone on our path to launch, and the creativity behind our 2026 format reflects the strategic vision for what this conference will become.”

For FCS coaches and athletic directors the immediate tasks are logistical and competitive: prepare rosters for hostile environments, monetize ticket and travel windows, and target the rare upset that can reshape a program’s recruiting cycle. For fans, the opening weeks of 2026 promise a packed calendar of David-versus-Goliath matchups, with a handful of incomplete schedule lines to be clarified as the summer approaches.