Week One NATIONAL College Football Previews:

ACC, SEC In Huge Labor Day Weekend Spotlights
With Clemson-LSU, Louisville-Ole Miss, SMU-FSU
(DG’s Weekly CFB YouTube Show = Below)

By David Glenn
North Carolina Sports Network
(last updated Sept. 3, 2026)

The 2026 college football season continues Thursday through Monday with a compelling Week One schedule that runs all the way through the extended Labor Day weekend.

The most prominent games nationally — each previewed below — offer a back-to-back-to-back (Saturday-Sunday-Monday) prime-time menu that includes a single Top 25-vs.-Top 25 contest and two head-to-head clashes between Atlantic Coast Conference and Southeastern Conference contenders: Clemson at #11 LSU (Sat., 7:30 p.m., ABC), #24 Louisville versus #9 Ole Miss in Nashville (Sun., 7:30 p.m., ABC) and #19 SMU at Florida State (Mon., 7:30 p.m., ESPN).

Meanwhile, in intriguing games involving one or more team from the Bold North State, upstart East Carolina visits #13 Alabama (Sat., noon, ABC), Tulane visits 2025 ACC champion Duke (Sat., 3:30 p.m., ACCN) and Appalachian State breaks in a much-hyped new quarterback in a home game against Maine (Sat., 3:30 p.m., ESPN+).

Here are more details on our “Three To See” selections from this week’s national schedule:

National “Three To See,” Game One

Clemson (0-0) at #11 LSU (0-0), Sat., 7:30 p.m. (ABC)

Beyond the frivolous fun regarding “the real Tigers” and “the real Death Valley,” this prime-time ABC celebration offers a fascinating matchup between two of the biggest names in the college football coaching ranks.

Dabo Swinney is in his 18th full season as the head coach at Clemson, and he’s already a two-time national champion, a three-time national coach of the year and a nine-time ACC champion. However, he hasn’t had a top-10 campaign since 2020, and his Tigers dropped all the way to 7-6 a year ago, in part because Swinney hasn’t utilized the transfer portal to nearly the same degree as virtually all of his competitors.

First-year LSU coach Lane Kiffin, of course, went from being infamous for how his tenures ended at Tennessee and Southern Cal to rejuvenated during his three-year tenure at Florida Atlantic to “hero” near the end of his six-year reign at Ole Miss (which won 11 games under Kiffin and made the College Football Playoff last year) to “villain” because of the unseemly details of his late-season exit for Baton Rouge.

It’s mainly the players who will win or lose this game, of course, and one area to watch with that in mind is, as usual, the quarterback position.

LSU has far more experience and proven production there, in the form of Sam Leavitt, who was the starter at Arizona State over the past two seasons. Leavitt steps into a situation with several proven offensive linemen in front of him, a probable all-star at tight end in Trey’Dez Green, and a supposedly solid defense that also has several future NFL players on hand.

Clemson, meanwhile, is handing the keys to an extremely inexperienced player in Christopher Vizzina, a fourth-year guy who has been with the Tigers for his entire college career but almost entirely in a backup role to the departed Cade Klubnik. Waiting in the wings is true freshman QB Tait Reynolds, who probably also will see the field on Saturday night.

Clemson also has an old-but-new offensive coordinator in Chad Morris, who spent five previous seasons under Swinney but hasn’t coordinated a college-level offense since 2020, with a mediocre Auburn squad.

If Clemson (a 10-point underdog) is going to somehow win this one on the road, it will need many of its star returnees to shine, including wide receiver Bryant Wesco, defensive end Will Heldt, linebacker Sammy Brown and cornerback Ashton Hampton.

National “Three To See,” Game Two

#24 Louisville (0-0) vs. #9 Ole Miss (0-0), Sun., 7:30 p.m. (ABC)

The most fascinating angles to this neutral-site matchup in Nashville, Tenn., revolve around new Ole Miss head coach Pete Golding, who previously was a standout defensive coordinator for Nick Saban at Alabama and for Lane Kiffin at Ole Miss, and new Louisville quarterback Lincoln Kienholz, who was a prep All-American in South Dakota but spent the past three seasons as a little-used backup at Ohio State.

Before his controversial late-season departure for LSU a year ago, Kiffin took Ole Miss to places the Rebels had not been in a long, long time.

Over the past five seasons, Ole Miss averaged more than 10 victories per year, finished in the top 11 of the national polls four times, and — just last year, when Golding replaced Kiffin for the College Football Playoff — set the all-time school record with 13 wins and a trip to the CFP semifinals. Even after Kiffin’s wild exit, remember, the Rebels beat Tulane and Georgia before eventually falling to Miami in the Final Four.

Historically, Ole Miss has a brutally tough time sustaining success. Coaches such as Billy Brewer, Tommy Tuberville, David Cutcliffe, Houston Nutt and Hugh Freeze took the Rebels to top-25 finishes, but very rarely did they reach the 10-win threshold or challenge for SEC supremacy. In fact, to this day, Ole Miss hasn’t won an SEC football title since 1963, so Golding has his hands full in that regard.

Heading into the 2026 season, however, the Rebels have a bunch of the best players in the SEC, including sixth-year senior quarterback Trinidad Chambliss, junior running back Kewan Lacy, junior defensive tackle Will Echoles, senior linebacker Suntarine Perkins and fifth-year senior kicker Lucas Carneiro (a product of Davidson, N.C.).

On the Louisville side, fourth-year coach Jeff Brohm quickly has built a very competitive program. The Cardinals won 10 games in 2023 and finished in the national Top 25, and they won nine games in each of the past two years.

Louisville has an elite running back in Isaac Brown, an elite pass rusher in Clev Lubin and lots of other high-end talent — largely from the transfer portal — all over the depth chart.

The lingering question for the Cardinals is at quarterback, where Kienholz is a perfect example of an age-old question. Was the guy a backup at Ohio State for three years because he’s simply not good enough to start for a top-level team, or is he truly a special talent who was stuck behind other special talents on the Buckeyes’ incredibly deep depth chart and is now ready to shine as a true QB1?

One thing everyone knows for sure is that Brohm, a former Louisville signal-caller himself, has a fantastic track record as a QB whisperer of sorts. Only if he can work his magic very quickly with Kienholz, however, are the Cardinals (a seven-point underdog) likely to triumph over a top-10 opponent on Sunday night.