About Camping World Kickoff
The Camping World Kickoff is college football's way of saying hello. Held on opening weekend in Orlando's Camping World Stadium — formerly known as the Citrus Bowl — the game is the leftmost bookend to the season, with two prominent teams playing on a neutral site in a bowl-like atmosphere.
College football has a way of making novelties seem like long-standing traditions. So it is with the Camping World Kickoff, which debuted in 2016 with a shootout between the No. 4 Florida State Seminoles and the No. 11 Ole Miss Rebels. The Seminoles rallied from 22 points down thanks to the arm and legs of their redshirt freshman quarterback, Deondre Francois. After a year off, the Kickoff returned in 2018 with the No. 1 Alabama Crimson Tide, the defending national champions, routing the Louisville Cardinals, 51-14.
If the game feels like it's always been around, that might have something to do with the Depression-era stadium. Owned and operated by the city of Orlando, Camping World Stadium is one of college football's classic venues, occasionally maligned but reliable and home to a lot of memorable football, Monster Jams, soccer and even cameos in the TV series Coach. Built in 1936 under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration, what was then called Orlando Stadium had a stadium capacity of 8,900. As college football grew, so did the stadium. By the end of the century, the Florida Citrus Bowl, as it was known, was a fully modern, 65,000-capacity facility. It got another series of upgrades and, in 2016, a new name. Today, Camping World Stadium visitors will find clean sightlines and plenty of tailgating opportunities near the stadium.