The App State Football season opener originally scheduled for Thursday, Aug. 28, is now and hopefully permanently on Friday, Aug. 29.
If you didn’t know or don’t plan ahead in any aspect of your life, the game is UNC Charlotte “hosting” App State in Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte. That’s where the Panthers play. Just drive toward the big buildings and you’ll eventually see a football stadium. Park somewhere in the area and walk there. When exactly? I dunno, the announcement says game time in TBA.
Oh yeah, the game’s sponsored by Duke’s Mayo, just like the bowl game at the end of the season that won’t let App State play in it but rather bring in Arkansas or Boston College because of “conference affiliation” or some equally stupid reason.
If you click that above link, you’ll see when you can buy tickets, what price and where in the stadium. Use your brain and figure it out.
Why is this game being moved to Friday? Probably because Thursday is already crowded with teams looking to get a head start on the 2025 season. Only competition on Friday (so far) is Kansas hosting an FCS team and Wake Forest hosting Kennesaw State. Since one of those is over 1,000 miles away and no one goes to Wake games anyway, it bodes well for the game being on a main channel of a four-lettered network. All hail the TV overlords. Hopefully whatever Canadian Football game is programmed beforehand doesn’t run long.
Also, there’s no other Mayo Classic game that weekend, unlike 2021 where the allure of Clemson and Georgia fans filling BoA bumped App State and ECU to Thursday night. That’s what happens when your university takes football seriously in the 1950s and doesn’t stop for over 75 years.
This will also be the first game the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s football team plays in the City of Charlotte. We should all be proud of them for this milestone.
Also, Charlotte now has a real college football coach who has won football games and trophies and is way less interesting, yet probably a much-better human being. And not in that performative way that ensnares non-sports writers who think there’s a real English soccer team named the Richmond Greyhounds (I still can’t believe The Assembly published this awful puff piece three days before Biff got fired, and The Assembly is normally really good).
Full football schedule will come out by March 1, per the Sun Belt’s ESPN contract. Since March 1 is a Saturday this year, it might come out early, which it has before. We’ll learn which league games will be sandwiched between the first two games and the Boise trip.
For those keeping track those league games available in September are JMU and Southern Miss in Week 3 (Sept. 13) and Coastal and ODU in Week 4 (Sept. 20). Out of those, only Coastal would be at home and doing ODU and Boise in back-to-back weeks would really suck. I’m hoping either at JMU then an off week before Boise, or an off week and then a September Thursday night home game versus Coastal before the western trip. The latter negates the normal Saturday-to-Thursday turnaround where App State went 0-2 last season and gives a couple extra days of prep before Boise.
2025 is a year with an extra college football week (14 instead of 13), so FBS teams get two off weeks instead of one. Thus, a September off week is perfectly fine this season.
If you’ve read all that, here’s CJ Huntley’s game-winning dunk from last week versus Southern Miss to appease your pallet.
pipedreams 
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