Lebanon, TN – With our 2024 schedule, Collegefootballfan.com announces its 45th season of great college football travels and action. With our 700th game since 1979 slated among them, we frontloaded our early season schedule. We wanted to assure a timely celebration for that particular game. Now in retirement, this slate prioritizes our “Bucket List.” We summarized it in our book, Fifty Years of Tailgate Tales: The Good, the Fun and the Ugly. Click here to review and purchase the book about this unique, fun lifetime adventure! To view our entire upcoming 16-week regular season schedule, please check it out by clicking here for our 2024 schedule page. Our 2024 schedule celebrates this season with a record-attending 29 games. It features 38 teams and 10 new venues to be visited for our first time.
Top Teams in 2024
Pre-season polls favor some Top Teams we’ve already booked for this season. Ohio State at Penn State on November 2 looks to be our biggest game of all. Oregon joins the Big Ten. We’ll venture to see the Ducks face Wisconsin at Camp Randle in Madison on November 16. It will be our first ever Badger home game. For our 700th game, despite a potential blow-out, the tailgate will be memorable when Notre Dame meets Navy at the Meadowlands on October 26.
Florida State appears on our slate as host for the first time at Doak Campbell Stadium on September 2. Boston College comes calling to Tallahassee. We also plan to possibly see the Seminoles visit Duke on Friday, October 18. To assure ourselves to definitely witness the best among the best, we booked a ticket for The Capital One Orange Bowl on Thursday, January 9. For the first time with a 12-team playoff format, Hard Rock Stadium hosts the CFP Semi-final game. We’re sure to see a team heading to the 2024 National Championship!
Many first-year head coaches featured in our 2024 schedule
With the wide-open and soon to be better controlled transfer portal situation (NIL donors will require contracts eventually), we know we’ll witness a plethora of transfers in most contests. However, we have proverbial, front row seats to many teams playing under new, and mostly better, head coaches. All enter their first seasons with their respective programs.
- Bronco Mendenhall, after two years off from head coaching, returns at our opener to New Mexico with a successful career record of 135-81 over 17 years – 11 at BYU and six at Virginia.
- Duke hired new Head Coach Manny Diaz, former Miami Hurricane HC and Penn State defensive coordinator. We plan to see the Blue Devils three times this season.
- The Boston College Eagles introduce their new HC Bill O’Brien. He brings New England, Penn State, Houston Texan, and Alabama experiences on his resume after leaving a new OC position at Ohio State. BC faces the FSU Seminoles to open their season. State HC Mike Norvell hired former Middle Tennessee State HC and FSU alum/star QB Rick Stockstill on his staff.
- Speaking of Middle Tennessee, replacing Stockstill comes new HC Derek Mason, former Vanderbilt HC from 2014-2020. We have season tickets for Blue Raider games at Red Floyd Stadium in Murfreesboro. We plan to see five games where they’ll host Duke and Liberty among others.
- Defending Sun Belt Conference champ Troy (11-3) starts under new HC Gerard Parker. He served as offensive coordinator the last two seasons at Notre Dame. We’ll see him face Texas State who improved significantly last season to 8-5 under first-year HC GJ Kinne.
- Willie Fritz left Tulane behind in great shape leaving a 54-47 record after eight seasons. He departed to take over the Houston Cougars. Tulane appears to be in good hands now with Jon Sumrall who Parker replaced at Troy. Sumrall came from Troy after only two seasons posting a 23-4 record. He also achieved two Sun Belt Conference championships and a pair of double-digit winning streaks. His Green Wave visits the Blazers of Alabama Birmingham on October 5. They look to improve under second-year HC Trent Dilfer.
- Texas El Paso visits Western Kentucky on Thursday evening October 10 at Houchens-Smith Ltd. Stadium in Bowling Green for an interesting C-USA bout. UTEP comes in with new first-year HC Scotty Walden, formerly of FCS Austin Peay who we’ve seen several times. Once, we saw his APSU squad fall to WKU. Walden has a high energy level that he hopes to eventually instill in the struggling Minor program.
- New Mexico State visits Middle Tennessee on November 23 under new HC Tony Sanchez. He takes over from Jerry Kill who coached the Aggies last year to a record of 10-5 in his second season. Kill had returned to lead NMSU after several missed seasons due to illness. Sanchez served Kill as his wide receiver coach. Prior, he coached UNLV as HC to record of 20-40. Kill’s leadership brought new energy to State. Sanchez will need to keep that momentum headed in the right direction.
Why this contest on our 2024 schedule for Game 700?
We wanted a game of significance and a great tailgate opportunity to celebrate the milestone of our 700th game. Navy vs. Notre Dame fits the bill for us from among personal, historical and logistical perspectives. Despite the game not considered a competitive battle on the field since NILs and transfer portals greatly favor of the Irish program compared to Navy which can’t take advantage of either. This long-time, intersectional “rivalry” should or could end soon. We’ve seen the Irish and Midshipmen meet eight times going all the way back to 1974. Notre Dame defeated the Naval Academy in that one, 14-6, when I attended amongst the Brigade of Midshipmen. The late, great Hall of Fame HC of Notre Dame, Ara Parseghian, decided to retire based on the pressures of needing to win all games more handily.
We saw that game at The Vet in Philly. Since then, most games attended among the neutral sites came in The Meadowlands. I got to see Navy win one of their only two over the Fighting Irish since then in 2010, 35-17. The win eventually sent another Irish HC packing – Charlie Weis, thankfully. With many friends still living in New Jersey and many who’ve attended Navy games in Annapolis with me, at least 30 good friends will gather to tailgate in the Met Life Stadium parking lot. A lot of fun memories going back there many years ago in this life-long adventure!
The Road to Game 700 didn’t come easily if not for great friends and timely opportunities
To make this Game 700 “officially” though, the October 26 date raised challenges to make this our 19th game on the 2024 schedule starting from week “Zero” on August 24. Focused now on a “Bucket List,” I thankfully have a lot of great friends (and nearby Conference-USA schedules) benefitted me to achieve this. Many will join and host me among the 19 necessary games to be attended (seven played on weekday evenings). For week “Zero,” mostly out of curiosity, my wife, St. Laurie, was all for a long weekend to visit New Mexico, our first trip there. Early season games, though FBS vs FCS, start with “Bugaluga” Harton at Wake Forest and with PSU grad Joe Massimilla living near Duke in Durham, NC allowed me attend two weeknight openers to accelerate my schedule to capture October 26.
Heading to Arkansas State and Wyoming on the following Saturdays for first-time adventures, I’m meeting up with Mike, one of my son-in-law Zach’s former colleagues at Texas State; and with my former Allied-Signal colleague and friend, Gary Groner. Gary graduated from Wyoming and moved back out there in semi-retirement. He responded he wondered what was taking me so long to get out there.
2024 schedule with old friends and new places: Games 692-699
I contacted another friend, Al Di Vite, who retired to western North Carolina. Last year, we went to see Navy at Charlotte. He and I ventured to Auburn back in 1978 to meet our friend Charlie Murren to see his Tigers tie Georgia, 22-22. This year, he and his brother Les will meet up once again with me at his place to see South Alabama at Appy State in nearby Boone. We’ve talked about attending a game there since he moved down. A week later, Duke conveniently visits MTSU. When Navy visits UAB in Birmingham the following Saturday, my first Navy roommate, Mike Malinack, and I will get together since he’s living in Alabama now. I have a three-day tip planned after that for three games in a row. Travel plans still need to be finalized for games in Bama and Georgia in early October.
Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee play a couple of weekday evenings sandwiched around my first trip to a Central Michigan game. There, another good friend and retired colleague from BASF, Mike Meyer, will join me with his family to tailgate at their alma mater against Ohio U. And to get to games 698-699, I have a couple of options for two games. I tend to be leaning now to get back to Duke for a Friday night game against FSU. The following day, I may follow that up with an interesting FCS rivalry of sorts, The Citadel at VMI in Lexington, Virginia – another first-time venue. Sounds frantic, but basically fun times with a lot of good people I’ve met over the years.
A bowl game that will mean something
Click here for our entire 2024 Schedule up through the Capital One Orange Bowl semi-final. Tentative and subject to change if better opportunities become available on certain dates.
-Ed. by Steve Koreivo, member of Football Writers Association of America.