There are only four games between ranked teams in the opening week of the 2016 college football season; and the argument could be made that the most significant of those matchups is defending national champion and No. 1 Alabama against No. 20 USC at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, in the Advocare Classic (formerly the Cowboys Classic). This is just one of many efforts over the past four decades to bring a “bowl game” feel to the beginning of the college football season.
The first and longest-running of these efforts was the Kickoff Classic, which launched in 1983 at the Meadowlands in New Jersey, when defending national champion Penn State faced No.