Week Zero landed in Dublin this year, with TCU and North Carolina squaring off at Aviva Stadium in the Aer Lingus College Football Classic to open the entire 2026 season. It's the fifth straight year the event has been held at the venue, and the first time either program has played a game outside the U.S. Barstool's gambling desk treated it like the main event it was, with Big Cat firing off the first pick 'em play of the year on the under and Pardon My Take building a same-day parlay around a TCU spread.
The first TD of the season belongs to TCU
TCU drew first blood with Denman's touchdown, giving bettors like Will Compton — who was on the Horned Frogs at -7.5 — an early reason to feel good about riding TCU into Year 2 of Bill Belichick's rebuild on the other sideline. Belichick's first season in Chapel Hill ended at 4-8, and he's spent the offseason talking up a culture shift and fewer penalties. Dublin did not exactly cooperate on that last point for either team.
TROUBLE WITH THE SNAP!
That botched snap turned a laugher-in-waiting into an actual football game, and it stayed messy from there. By the third quarter North Carolina had clawed in front 12-10, and that's when TCU's Jeremy Payne turned a big defensive stop into the story of the day for all the wrong reasons.
Unsportsmanlike conduct pointing for a first down
Barstool's gambling account called it an early contender for worst call of the season, and the timing was brutal — a live-ball penalty in a one-score game that had already flipped once. Brandon Walker summed up the whole afternoon about as well as anyone.
I spent the first 10 minutes thinking “oh UNC and TCU might be pretty decent” and then the two teams spent the next hour just destroying that thought.
That's Week Zero for you — two programs traveling across an ocean for a spotlight game, and the headline ends up being a phantom flag instead of the football. Mintzy was already banking on chaos, pointing out that Dublin games have been magnets for underdog moneyline upsets in recent years and that the public was still sour on TCU after last year's Monday night blowout. Whether that history holds up, the Horned Frogs and Tar Heels made sure this one earned its spot on Barstool's radar before either team's real conference schedule even starts.