A quick glance around Week 1’s college football schedule was all it took to notice how high-stakes, highly anticipated opening games between big-name, out-of-conference opponents are nearing extinction.
Most opening matchups stunk in 2026 for major-conference teams, ending up as blowouts.
Labor Day weekend offered only one game in which both teams were ranked in the Associated Press’ preseason media poll. That game happened to be in Nashville, with Ole Miss and Louisville each traveling a little ways for a nationally televised, Sunday night contest at Nissan Stadium.
It certainly wasn't the venue that lured them here. Old Nissan Stadium, to borrow a line from colleague Terry McCormick, feels like a car about to be traded in, needing a lot of repair
work that'll never happen. This game, too, wasn’t just two schools sitting down and settling on a common location on a map.
Nah, this is bigger plans in motion. This game has a title sponsor. And maybe a future. And definitely an emu.
The Liberty Mutual Music City Kickoff, they are calling it, and it’s not intended to be a one-time occasion.
As the Nashville Sports Council’s web page promoting this game has teased, “A new tradition begins in Music City.” Sounds like there could be high-quality, season-opening college football games like these for years to come in a new Nissan Stadium.
“That would be the goal,” said Scott Ramsey, Sports Council CEO and President. “In working with the (Tennessee) Titans, kind of in lockstep on this one, I really hope we can.”
No guarantees, Ramsey cautioned. Not in this era of rampant uncertainty in college sports.
But the city, clearly, is viewing Labor Day weekend as a college sports opportunity on multiple fronts. The Louisville-Ole Miss football game was only part of a sports weekend including a nationally televised volleyball doubleheader at Bridgestone Arena. The “Broadway Block Party” was set to feature Louisville-Texas followed by Tennessee-Indiana.
Ideas are in the works to try to bring the NCAA women’s soccer championships to Geodis Park or perhaps the NCAA women’s volleyball championship to Bridgestone Arena. That’s per Ramsey, who also said that Nashville will bid to extend the two-year agreement for the FCS national title football game at Vanderbilt’s FirstBank Stadium.
"We feel like Labor Day is an opportunity, a little bit like FCS was in January, to take a weekend that the city could host an event and a game, and we could kind of turn it into a multi-day activity,” Ramsey said.
That makes sense. With FBS bowl games increasingly under threat (and even more so if the playoff expands to 24 teams), establishing an annual, big-time Labor Day football weekend is an alluring and proactive move for a mid-tier bowl city like Nashville.
A good template would be the annual Aflac kickoff game – or games – held in Atlanta.
You know, those games where winning coaches and players end up wearing that silly leather helmet?
The Atlanta kickoff games date back nearly two decades. Beginning with Nick Saban’s burgeoning powerhouse at Alabama opening back-to-back seasons at the old Georgia Dome, beating Clemson in 2008 and Virginia Tech in 2009, this event has welcomed 22 different SEC teams and 20 ACC teams.
It's no coincidence that the Atlanta game has trafficked heavily in SEC and ACC teams. It's geography, for one, but it’s also because those conferences have TV deals with ESPN/ABC. (Unlike, say, the Big Ten and FOX).
Louisville and Ole Miss, too, opened the season against each other in Atlanta in 2021.
Five years later, here they are in Nashville. And they won’t be the last ones, reportedly.
Georgia and Florida State have agreed to play in Nashville in 2028 (per a June report from Warchant.com), but there’s still room in the new stadium for 2027.
"We're working on something for next year,” Ramsey said. “Then once you get to ’29 and beyond, because it's a regular-season game, you’ve got to deal with two ADs, two head coaches, two conference offices and two (television) rights-holders, to some degree.”
One could look at this Louisville-Ole Miss game and at the massive domed stadium nearly complete next door and see a strong future for season-opening showcases like these in Nashville.
We'll have to wait and see, though.
“Scheduling a regular-season game in the future, multiple years out, is really difficult to 100% say for sure, 'Yes, we're going to do it every year,’ ” Ramsey said, “just because you just don't know how the scheduling is going to change within these conferences. …
“Right now, (a few years) seems to be 100 years out.”
Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and hang out with him on Bluesky @gentryestes.bsky.social
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Games like Louisville vs Ole Miss could become a Labor Day tradition in Nashville | Estes
