With beads of sweat still streaking down his face, South Carolina coach Shane Beamer happily went over the checklist on his personal notepad after the Gamecocks’ 57-0 season-opening win over Kent State. The hottest game in the history of Williams-Brice Stadium — 95 degrees with a heat index high of 106 degrees — forced the lopsided result to be cut 10 minutes short due to searing temperatures. But when Beamer mentioned the record-setting heat, he said no Gamecocks had cramping issues.In a postgame video from the South Carolina locker room, one player interrupted Beamer’s speech.
Hydration is key 🙌 pic.twitter.com/eEl36sgQZO
— South Carolina Football (@GamecockFB) September 5, 2026“Yimy gets a game ball!” one player shouted.Beamer agreed.The person who sent the locker room into a frenzy wasn’t Beamer or star quarterback LaNorris Sellers. It was Yimy Queipo Rodriguez, the program’s performance nutritionist, who was given a game ball for his role in battling unforgiving elements never seen before by the program.Welcome to Week 1 of college football.It wasn’t just South Carolina. On the first Saturday of the 2026 college football season, several games around the country featured record-breaking temperatures that tested players, coaching staffs and fans in the stands.James Spann has been attending Alabama home games since he was a kid, when he would sell programs outside the stadium in exchange for a ticket. The chief meteorologist at ABC33 in Birmingham, Ala., Spann was at Bryant-Denny Stadium on Saturday as he still is every Saturday each fall as Alabama’s weather support provider. He said the air temperature peaked at 99 degrees with the heat index reaching 110 degrees, making it the hottest game in program history.The Crimson Tide reportedly brought in 30,000 pounds of ice for their sideline and encouraged players to drink 10-15 water bottles before kickoff. Elsewhere, a Tulsa radio team’s on-field temperature reading showed 161 degrees inside H.A. Chapman Stadium. Georgia, like Alabama, had its hottest home game on record. And Arkansas’ live mascot, Tusk VII, did not attend the season-opener due to the heat advisory.On the day Hoosier fans celebrated last year’s national championship run inside Memorial Stadium, the stands grew increasingly empty as the season opener against North Texas wore on. In his opening remarks after the 52-16 win, coach Curt Cignetti mentioned the heat first.“I heard a couple minutes ago the heat index was at 152, which I’ve never heard of in my life,” he said.The heat didn’t just force South Carolina’s opener to be trimmed by 10 minutes. In Topeka, Kan., it forced a Division II matchup between the Colorado School of Mines and Washburn to end in a 16-16 tie. Due to the severe heat forecast, kickoff was moved up to 9:05 a.m. local time. Around 11:30 a.m., temperatures on the field exceeded that of the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association rules as the heat index reached 107 degrees. Rather than go to overtime, both teams agreed to end the game in a tie.“There are decisions made way above the coaches,” Washburn coach Zach Watkins told the Associated Press. “But it’s all about keeping the kids safe.”
