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Come Fan with UsSaturday, August 8, 2026

Why watch Mayweather vs. McGregor when you can watch Stanford vs. Rice for free?

It doesn’t cost any money!

College football’s doing the soft open thing again, with five FBS games on Aug. 26, the weekend before the whole thing really gets rolling.

Hey, you know what else happens on Aug. 26? The weirdest spectacle of two different sports colliding since Nick Saban faced Johnny Manziel: Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor.

It’ll surely kick off (sports term) late in the day, meaning viewers will be faced with the hard choice of watching maybe the biggest single sporting event of the summer or Stanford vs. Rice in Sydney, Australia. (This is all assuming our rich friends buy the fight on PPV.)

Well, let me sell you on Stanford vs. Rice in Sydney, Australia.

  • It costs no money to watch.
  • It’s in Australia.
  • Sydney is better than Las Vegas, probably.
  • Stanford’s band will act up in its first game back from suspension.
  • Rice’s historic football dominance includes the best record of anybody against Alabama and ... we need to keep moving.
  • Stanford could be a national contender.
  • Both sides actually play the same sport! (But one side will still be massively favored.)
  • Yeah well, neither team is attempting to box for its first time ever.
  • Sure, both Mayweather and David Shaw’s Stanford have the same goal in life: play defense and punt until the other side screws something up, score exactly enough points to win, and then wait until the whistle blows or whatever. So sure, Stanford-Rice and Mayweather-McGregor are basically the same event, as long as David Bailiff gets a sick chest tat and starts talking endless shit. Except one costs no money to watch!
  • It’s free.

There. You. Have. It. Spend zero dollars and watch a sluggish sporting event that is probably a total mismatch and almost certainly won’t factor into any actual championships, or spend a lot of money to do the same.

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