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# When College Football Had a Preseason: The Lost Novelty of the August Classic
- URL: https://www.grumpybuck.com/when-college-football-had-a-preseason-the-lost-novelty-of-the-august-classic/
- Published: 2026-08-30T01:21:38.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-30T01:21:38.000Z
- Description: For twenty years, college football played real games in August that felt like gifts — until the NCAA killed the loophole that made them possible. This is the story of the lost preseason classic.
- Author: Brad Riddell
- Tags: College Football, Sports History

*For twenty years, college football did something it will never do again: it played real games in August that felt like gifts. The Kickoff Classic. The Pigskin Classic. One-off showcases with trophies nobody remembers and games nobody who watched them forgets — including the night a team of punt-blocking maniacs from Raleigh walked into Austin and stole one from Texas.*

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## The Invention (1983)

![Joe Paterno and Tom Osborne at the Kickoff Classic announcement — the first August game paired the defending champs with preseason No. 1](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/pre-paterno-osborne-kickoff.jpg)

Joe Paterno and Tom Osborne at the Kickoff Classic announcement — the first August game paired the defending champs with preseason No. 1

On **August 29, 1983**, college football did something it had never done in more than a century of existence: it played a regular-season game in August. The inaugural Kickoff Classic at Giants Stadium matched preseason No. 1 Nebraska against defending national champion Penn State — on paper, the two best programs in America, three weeks before anyone else would play a down.

![Omaha World-Herald, Aug 30, 1983: ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/clip-pre-omaha-1983.jpg)

Omaha World-Herald, Aug 30, 1983: "Huskers Exhibit Might in Victory" — coverage of the first Kickoff Classic

Nebraska won 44–6, and the score was the least important thing about it. The Kickoff Classic had invented a new kind of college football event: the made-for-TV, neutral-site mega-opener. There would be twenty of them in East Rutherford through 2002, most carried nationally by ABC, and the idea spread — the **Pigskin Classic** launched in Anaheim in 1990, and the Eddie Robinson Classic and Black Coaches Association Classic followed.

## Why It Existed at All

![Joe Paterno on the Penn State sideline](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/pre-paterno-sideline.jpg)

Joe Paterno on the Penn State sideline

Here's the beautifully weird part: these games existed because of a loophole. Until 2002, the NCAA capped the regular season at 11 games — *unless* your opener was a licensed Classic. Play in the Kickoff, the Pigskin, the Eddie Robinson, or the BCA Classic and you got a **free 12th game**: an extra home-gate's worth of revenue, an extra TV check, an extra tune-up. Programs lined up for it.

So every August, while the rest of the sport was still in two-a-days, two teams would materialize on national television and play a game that *counted*. After eight months without college football, it hit like water in the desert.

## The Games Were Actually Great

![Colorado and Tennessee at the 1990 Pigskin Classic — the 31-31 tie that counted toward a national title](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/pre-cu-ut-1990.jpg)

Colorado and Tennessee at the 1990 Pigskin Classic — the 31-31 tie that counted toward a national title

![The Disneyland Pigskin Classic program, Aug 26, 1990 — yes, that is Mickey in stripes](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/pre-pigskin-program-1990.jpg)

The Disneyland Pigskin Classic program, Aug 26, 1990 — yes, that is Mickey in stripes

The novelty would have worn off if the games were duds. They weren't:

![The Tennessean, Aug 27, 1990: ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/clip-pre-tennessean-1990.jpg)

The Tennessean, Aug 27, 1990: "Act I for Vols a Disney deadlock" — the 31-31 Pigskin Classic tie

- **1990 Pigskin Classic:** No. 5 Colorado 31, No. 8 Tennessee 31 — a tie (no overtime existed) that Colorado carried on its record all the way to an 11-1-1 share of the national championship.
- **1989 Kickoff Classic:** No. 1 Notre Dame handled Virginia — the win that positioned the Irish for the legendary 1-vs-2 showdown at Michigan two weeks later.
- And the best of them all, in front of the most hostile crowd any of them ever drew…

## August 28, 1999: The Night NC State Blocked Three Punts in Austin

![Texas tries to escape the wreckage — NC State blocked 3 punts in Austin on Aug 28, 1999](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/pre-texas-ncstate-1999.jpg)

Texas tries to escape the wreckage — NC State blocked 3 punts in Austin on Aug 28, 1999

The Black Coaches Association Classic put unranked NC State on the road against **Mack Brown's No. 17 Texas Longhorns** at Royal-Memorial Stadium. Texas outgained the Wolfpack. Texas led 20–15 with three and a half minutes to play. None of it mattered, because NC State spent the evening committing serial punt robbery:

![Austin American-Statesman, Aug 29, 1999: ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/clip-pre-statesman-1999.jpg)

Austin American-Statesman, Aug 29, 1999: "Kicked around — Blocked punts knock life out of Longhorns"

- **First half:** Eric Leak blocks a punt that turns into a safety.
- **Fourth quarter, 3:32 left:** Terrence Holt — younger brother of Wolfpack legend Torry — blocks Ryan Long's punt, his second block of the night, and Leak scoops the loose ball and returns it **48 yards for the go-ahead touchdown**.
- Jamie Barnette hits Chris Coleman in the corner of the end zone for the two-point conversion. **NC State 23, Texas 20.**

**Three blocked punts**, on the road, in a preseason showcase in front of a stunned burnt-orange crowd. It remains one of the great special-teams heists in college football history — and almost nobody remembers it, because it happened in a game category that no longer exists.

## The Death of the Preseason (2002)

![Old Giants Stadium beside its replacement — the Kickoff Classic died in 2002, and the era went with it. Photo: Agardk, CC BY-SA 3.0](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/pre-giants-old-new.jpg)

Old Giants Stadium beside its replacement — the Kickoff Classic died in 2002, and the era went with it. Photo: Agardk, CC BY-SA 3.0

In 2002 the NCAA killed the golden goose: the extra-game exemption was eliminated, and with it went the Kickoff Classic, the Pigskin Classic, and the whole licensed-Classic ecosystem. When the permanent 12-game schedule arrived a few years later, every program got its extra game without needing a Classic's blessing.

The neutral-site mega-opener didn't die — it got bigger. Today's Week 1 is stacked with them. But something was lost in translation: the *preseason-ness* of it. The old Classics stood alone in the dead of August, a week or more before anyone else kicked off, college football's version of a movie premiere. Now the openers arrive all at once, part of a firehose weekend, and no single game gets to be The Only Game in the Sport.

For twenty years, one game a year got that stage. Sometimes it was a 44–6 dud. Sometimes it was a tie that decided a national title. And once, gloriously, it was three blocked punts in Austin.

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*Do you remember watching the Kickoff Classic — and which forgotten August game do you wish they'd bring back?*