CLEMSON — Imagine Clemson opening a new college football season on Aug. 23.

Talk about playing in the heat. Memorial Stadium really would feel like Death Valley if that were the case.

Moving the college football season up a week was one of the topics discussed this past week in Asheville, N.C., as 32 Division I Conference Commissioners came together for their annual three-day summer meetings.

The college leaders are exploring the idea of moving Week 1 to Week 0. It is a discussion that some are in favor of and others are not.

It is an idea that has been explored several times in the past and, like this year, it was met with the same opposition. According to Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger, commissioners expect the conversations to continue for the months to come.

Though there is no formal proposal, Dellenger reports support is growing for a new start to the college football season.

For now, if a team wants to open the season in Week 0, they must put in a waiver, a rule that was put in place back in 2016. If not, teams are not allowed to start a season until the Thursday night before Labor Day.

Though moving the start of the college football season up a week has some support, there are still others who like opening the season on Labor Day weekend where the season starts on Thursday night and runs through Labor Day. In case you are wondering, that is five days of college football.

“My view is we should have a consistent start date,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said in the article. “The adage is teams make their most substantial improvement between Games 1 and 2. I think we should have a consistent start date. Labor Day weekend has been a good start date for college football.

“The fact we are taking another look at it could be interesting. I’m not opposed to that. I want to make sure it’s a broad view of the issues and not something narrow.”

Starting the season a week earlier also gives teams an additional week for another bye week, giving the players more rest, especially in this new world of college football where the national champion could play up to 17 games.

“We had a good discussion about the calendar and a uniform start date for FBS instead of continuing to deal with waiver requests, case by case,” American commissioner Tim Pernetti told Yahoo Sports. “A consistent start date is a key element to the future of FBS.”

According to Dellenger, three years ago, College Football Playoff leaders spent several meetings discussing moving up the regular season by a week, which would shift rivalry games off of Thanksgiving, make conference championship weekend on that holiday and free up an extra weekend in December to hold rounds of a rapidly expanding playoff.

Dellenger points out there is another motivating factor in moving the college football season up a week. The FCS is expected to formalize a proposal that permits schools to begin playing in Week Zero. It would add a 12th regular season game to the schedule starting in 2026.

“The move from FCS to begin regularly playing on Week Zero may serve as a trigger for FBS,” Dellenger writes. “The two divisions often hold games against one another early in the season — quasi-preseason games for power programs looking to fine-tune a new team before bigger matchups on Labor Day weekend and beyond.”

At the moment, only a handful of teams have played in Week 0. There are just four games on the schedule in Week 0 for 2025.