Notre Dame gets prime time slot, College Gameday in season opener

Notre Dame football fans finally know when the Fighting Irish are facing off against the Texas A&M Aggies. The two teams will open the season under the prime time lights. And what's more, College Station will be playing host to ESPN's Game Day early in the morning.

On Tuesday morning, Notre Dame's season opener was announced as kicking off at 7:30pm local time on August 31. It's going to be a heck of a game, considering it's officially the start of the Riley Leonard era for the Irish.

The Aug 31 matchup also marks Mike Elko's first game as Texas A&M's head coach. Elko was the defensive coordinator and safeties coach at Texas A&M from 2018 to 2021 before being hired by Duke, where he was 16-9 in two seasons.

He was also of course, the defensive coordinator for Notre Dame for one season, in 2017.

Notre Dame football faces off with Texas A&M under the lights

This is also hardly the first time that Elko and Notre Dame have done battle. In fact, it's weirdly the second straight year they'll face off against one another despite the head coach being at two different schools in 2023 and 2024.

Last year, the Irish took on both Elko and Leonard in Durham and were able to overcome a mistake-prone game to win 21-14. It was in that game that Leonard was dealt the injury that he is still trying to recover from.

ABC's other Saturday Week 1 games are Clemson facing Georgia in Atlanta at noon ET and Florida hosting Miami at 3:30 p.m. in the first SEC telecast on the network. ABC takes over the late-afternoon SEC game from CBS.

Notre Dame football has a big task ahead of it in the 2024 season. There are some doubters that need to be proven wrong. Getting a big win over an A&M squad that's expected to be quite good will be a nice first step.