Football season is back, and Iowa City is going to be rocking for a Week 1 showdown at Kinnick Stadium.

The Iowa Hawkeyes are back in action after a long, program-shuffling offseason that has brought a lot of new faces to the thick of things. Awaiting Iowa on the other sideline are the Northern Illinois Huskies, who enter their first year as a member of the Mountain West Conference.

With kickoff looming and the season just hours from getting underway, here is all of the info you need to know for Iowa versus Northern Illinois in Week 1 of the 2026 college football season.

Iowa and Northern Illinois will get underway from Kinnick Stadium on Saturday, September 5, with kickoff set for 3:15 p.m. CT. The game is going to be a sellout crowd, chock-full of rabid Hawkeye fans.

The Hawkeyes can't dismiss Northern Illinois, though, as the Huskies own a victory over Iowa, which came in 2013.

Kickoff Time: 3:15 p.m. CT

Location: Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City, Iowa

TV Channel: Big Ten Network

Broadcast Team: Mark Followill (play-by-play), Rhett Lewis (analyst), Caroline Hendershot (sideline reporter)

Streaming: Big Ten Network app

Radio: Hawkeye Radio Network/SiruisXM Channel 83

Hawkeye Radio Network Team: Gary Dolphin (play-by-play), Pat Angerer (analyst), Rob Brooks (sideline reporter)

Spread: Iowa -31.5 (-108), Northern Illinois +31.5 (-112)

Money Line: Iowa -100000, Northern Illinois +5000

Total: 43.5 total points

All odds courtesy of DraftKings

You and I are both eagerly awaiting how Iowa plays out this quarterback rotation. Could it work? Or is it going to be a beautiful disaster that only Iowa could create?

The answer probably lies somewhere in the middle in this game, based on more than solely quarterback play. Iowa is going to run the ball, and run it a lot in this game. Truthfully, how much we will be able to glean from the Iowa quarterback play may have a hard ceiling based on how this game goes.

Kirk Ferentz isn't going to take the training wheels off in this game and let the offense put unnecessary plays or schemes on film if he doesn't have to. He can trust the ground game and defense to turn this into an ugly win if he has to.

That may be what happens. It feels like a lot for Iowa to cover more than four touchdowns with the question marks they have. That doesn't necessarily mean it's time to press the panic button, but the spread in this one looms a bit too large for my liking, with this game feeling like a boring, slow, vintage Iowa win.