Noon kickoff for Georgia-Clemson season opener at Mercedes-Benz Stadium

ATHENS — It’s likely to be steamy and hot outside, but it will be a cool 72 degrees inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium when Georgia and Clemson kickoff the 2024 season at noon Aug. 31 in the Aflac Kickoff game.

The start time for that highly anticipated game – formerly known as the Chick-fil-A Kickoff game – was announced Tuesday morning in New York as ABC/ESPN revealed to potential advertisers early-season start times for several key college football games scheduled for Week Zero and the first full weekend of the 2024 season.

Georgia vs. Clemson will be televised on ABC as part of an SEC tripleheader for the first full Saturday of the college football. Florida-Miami will kickoff at 3:30 p.m., and Notre Dame versus Texas A&M will serve as the prime-time game at 7:30 p.m. ESPN’s “College GameDay” show also will originate from College Station, Texas.

ABC takes over the SEC’s weekly games of the week this year after the longtime CBS deal expired after last season.

In December, ESPN announced that “GameDay” will make its first international trip Aug. 24, when Florida State faces Georgia Tech in Dublin, Ireland, in what’s known as Week Zero. That game also will kick off at noon.

ESPN’s Aug. 31 games include Alabama hosting Western Kentucky at 7:30 p.m. in Kellen DeBoer’s Crimson Tide debut.

Texas and Oklahoma, which join the SEC next season, will have its openers carried on ESPN. The Sooners host Temple at 7 p.m. Aug. 30, and the Longhorns face Colorado State at 3:30 p.m. Aug. 31.

The Bulldogs are coming off a 13-1 season and are expected to be ranked No. 1 when they renew their longtime, non-conference rivalry with Clemson. The two teams have played 65 times since their first meeting in 1897, including eight times in the 33 years. Georgia is 7-1 against the Tigers in those games, winning 10-3 in the last matchup in Charlotte that opened the 2021 national championship season. Mostly played home-and-away over the years, the Bulldogs lead the series 43-18-4.

This marks the Bulldogs’ fourth appearance in the Kickoff game after third-ranked Georgia most recently defeated 11th-ranked Oregon 49-3 in 2022. The Bulldogs’ all-time record on ABC is 51-27-2 after topping Tech in 2023 during Georgia’s only appearance on the network last season.

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