{"id":19015,"date":"2021-09-01T08:39:47","date_gmt":"2021-09-01T12:39:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ovathletics.com\/home\/?p=19015"},"modified":"2021-09-01T11:53:56","modified_gmt":"2021-09-01T15:53:56","slug":"game-week-the-2021-college-football-season-opener-is-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ovathletics.com\/home\/game-week-the-2021-college-football-season-opener-is-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Game Week: The 2021 College Football Season Opener is Here"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Four-time defending Big Ten champion <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Ohio State<\/span><\/strong> begins its quest for a fifth consecutive title on Thursday evening when it kicks off the 132nd season of Buckeye football with a primetime game at Minnesota.<\/p>\n<p>The Buckeyes are coming off a 2020 season in which it defeated Northwestern in the Big Ten Championship Game, won the Allstate Sugar Bowl over Clemson and reached the College Football Playoff National Championship Game.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">West Virginia<\/span><\/strong> opens its 2021 football season this Saturday at Capital One Field at Maryland Stadium against border rival Maryland in a contest that will kick off at 3:30 p.m. and will be televised nationally on ESPN.<\/p>\n<p>It will be the 53rd meeting between these two old rivals and the first since 2015 when Maryland was year-old members of the Big Ten Conference. The two schools played annually from 2010-15 and from 1980-2007 when the Terps were in the Atlantic Coast Conference.<\/p>\n<p>The <strong><span style=\"color: #ffcc00;\">West Liberty Hilltoppers <\/span><\/strong>kick off their 96<sup>th<\/sup> season of intercollegiate football on Sept. 2 when they welcome Walsh (Ohio) to West Family Stadium for a 7 p.m. kickoff. West Liberty welcomes back more than 50 returning lettermen and 18 starters from the spring.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Wheeling University<\/span> will start their season off in non-conference play when they go on the road to face Seton Hill on September 2nd. It will be their first non-conference game since the 2019 season, and they are hoping for a strong start.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ovathletics.com\/forum\/index.php\">Visit our Message Boards to discuss these games, and more.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Four-time defending Big Ten champion Ohio State begins its quest for a fifth consecutive title on Thursday evening when it kicks off the 132nd season of Buckeye football with a primetime game at Minnesota. The Buckeyes are coming off a 2020 season in which it defeated Northwestern in the Big Ten Championship Game, won the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":19016,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Game Week: The 2021 College Football Season Opener is Here - Ohio Valley Athletics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ovathletics.com\/home\/game-week-the-2021-college-football-season-opener-is-here\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Game Week: The 2021 College Football Season Opener is Here - Ohio Valley Athletics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Four-time defending Big Ten champion Ohio State begins its quest for a fifth consecutive title on Thursday evening when it kicks off the 132nd season of Buckeye football with a primetime game at Minnesota. 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