Fresno State faces the reigning national champion Michigan Wolverines in Week 1 of the NCAA college football season. With a new coach at the helm, the Wolverines begin their campaign to defend their national title.

Keep reading to find out how and when to watch the Fresno State Bulldogs vs. University of Michigan Wolverines game today, even if you don’t have cable.

How and when to watch the Fresno State vs. Michigan NCAA college football game

The Fresno State vs. Michigan college football game will be played on Saturday, August 31, 2024 at 7:30 p.m. ET (4:30 p.m. PT). The college football game will air on NBC, and stream on Peacock and Sling TV and the platforms featured below.

How and when to watch today’s Fresno State vs. Michigan game without cable

While many cable packages include NBC, it’s easy to watch the game if NBC isn’t included in your cable TV subscription, or if you don’t have cable at all. Your best options for watching are below. (Streaming options will require an internet provider.)

Sling TV is the most cost-effective way to stream the Fresno State vs. Michigan game

If you don’t have cable TV that includes NBC one of the most cost-effective ways to watch today’s game, and all the major sporting events happening this fall, is through a subscription to Sling TV. To watch NBC on Sling TV, you’ll need a subscription to the Blue tier. We suggest leveling up your coverage to get more NFL games this fall with the Orange + Blue tier.

That Orange + Blue plan normally costs $60 per month, but the streamer currently offers a half-off promotion for your first month, so you’ll pay just $30.

The streamer is also currently offering big savings on four months of the Orange + Blue tier plus the Sports Extras plan when you prepay for the Sling TV Season Pass. The Sports Extras plan includes SEC Network, Golf Channel and Big Ten Network among others. Prepay for four months of the Sling TV Season Pass and spend $219, reduced from $300.

Because Sling TV does not carry CBS, Sling subscribers will want to add Paramount+ to their bundle. Note that Paramount+ and CBS Essentials are both subsidiaries of Paramount Global.

Top features of Sling TV Orange + Blue plan:

• Sling TV is our top choice for streaming major sporting events like NASCAR.
• There are 46 channels to watch in total, including local NBC, Fox and ABC affiliates (where available).
• You get access to most local NFL games and nationally broadcast games at the lowest price.
• All subscription tiers include 50 hours of cloud-based DVR storage.
• You can add Golf Channel, NBA TV, NHL Network, NFL RedZone, MLB Network, Tennis Channel and more sports-oriented channels (19 in total) via Sling TV’s Sports Extras add-on.

Watch the Fresno State vs. Michigan game for free with FuboTV

You can watch every college football game airing on network TV, including tonight’s game, on FuboTV. FuboTV is a sports-centric streaming service that offers access to almost every NFL game of the season. Packages include CBS, Fox Sunday NFC games via “NFL on Fox”, NBC (Sunday Night Football), ESPN (Monday Night Football), NFL Network and more, so you’ll be able to watch more than just today’s games, all without a cable subscription.

To watch the NFL without cable, start a seven-day free trial of Fubo. You can begin watching immediately on your TV, phone, tablet or computer. In addition to NFL football, FuboTV offers MLB, NBA, NHL, MLS and international soccer games. 

Top features of FuboTV Pro Tier:

• There are no contracts with FuboTV — you can cancel at any time.
• The Pro tier includes over 180 channels, including NFL Network. (You’ll need to upgrade to Ultimate for NFL RedZone.)
• FuboTV includes all the channels you’ll need to watch college and pro football, including CBS (not available through Sling TV).
• All tiers come with 1,000 hours of cloud-based DVR recording.
• Stream on your TV, phone, tablet and other devices.

Watch today’s game on Peacock

College football and NFL fans can stream games airing on NBC on Peacock, in addition to getting access to Peacock-exclusive NFL games like the Week 1 Miami Dolphins vs. Kansas City Chiefs game scheduled to be played in São Paulo, Brazil. Peacock subscribers can also access Peacock originals like “Love Island” and the Annette Bening thriller “Apples Never Fall,” plus live NBC-aired content with a Peacock Premium Plus subscription, and Peacock’s library of on-demand content including “The Office.”

Your best value, you can get a year of Peacock Premium (with ads) for $80, or a year of Peacock Premium Plus (mostly ad-free) for $120. Or, get a monthly subscription: Peacock Premium subscription costs $8 per month, while Peacock Premium Plus is $14 per month.

Watch the Fresno State vs. Michigan game on Hulu + Live TV

You can watch the NFL, including NBC, with Hulu + Live TV. The bundle features access to 90 channels, including both Fox and FS1. Unlimited DVR storage is also included. Watch every game on every network with Hulu + Live TV, plus catch live NFL preseason games, exclusive live regular season games, popular studio shows (including NFL Total Access and the Emmy-nominated show Good Morning Football) and lots more.

Hulu + Live TV comes bundled with ESPN+ and Disney+ for $77 per month after a three-day free trial.

Watch today’s game with a digital HDTV antenna

You can also watch sports airing on network TV with an affordable indoor antenna, which pulls in local over-the-air HDTV channels such as CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, PBS, Univision and more. Here’s the kicker: There’s no monthly charge.

For anyone living in a partially blocked-off area (those near mountains or first-floor apartments), a digital TV antenna may not pick up a good signal — or any signal at all. But for many homes, a digital TV antenna provides a seriously inexpensive way to watch sports without paying a cable company. Indoor TV antennas can also provide some much-needed TV backup if a storm knocks out your cable.

This ultra-thin, multi-directional Mohu Leaf Pro Supreme digital antenna with a 65-mile range can receive hundreds of HDTV channels and can filter out cellular and FM signals. It delivers a high-quality picture in 1080p HDTV and top-tier sound. It comes with a 12-foot digital coax cable.

If you’re anxiously waiting for today’s game to begin, now is a great time to check out Amazon’s college football fan shop. The Amazon College Fan Shop is filled to the brim with officially licensed fan gear: You’ll find jerseys, team flags, T-shirts, hoodies and more, including tons of great gear for the football fan in your life. There are plenty of great deals awaiting you at Amazon, too, including some must-see deals on TVs for watching sports.

Tap the button below to head directly to the College Fan Shop page on Amazon and select your favorite team.

What is Michigan’s current team ranking?

The University of Michigan is currently ranked 9 out of 134 teams, according to our sister site CBS Sports.

What is the Fresno State current team ranking?

The Bulldogs are currently ranked 56 out of 134 teams, according to CBS Sports.

When is the 2024 NCAA college football championship game?

The College Football Playoff National Championship will be Monday, January 20, 2025, at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.

Michigan is just one day away from playing its first game of the 2024 season. The Wolverines will look to defend their national championship and in Week 1, Michigan plays a primetime game against Fresno State. It will be the first game between the two teams.

The Bulldogs are coming off of a 9-4 season. Fresno State returns veteran quarterback Mikey Keene who was one of the top quarterbacks in the Mountain West last year. Defensively, the Bulldogs were a top-50 defense in 2023 and the new-look Michigan offense will have to play well and keep the chains moving against Fresno State.

Michigan Wolverines on SI’s senior writer, Trent Knoop, spoke with several Michigan commits and targets to see what they thought would happen in Week 1 against Fresno State. You can see below their final score predictions along with a statement about the game.

Final score: 38-17 Michigan

“Decent outing but work for next week”

Final score: 35-10 Michigan

“Feels good being back in the Big House. Looking forward to seeing how the team compares to last season’s title team.”

Kanka predicts a “Big W from the boys in blue”

Final score: 42-14 Michigan

“I feel like they should dominate the whole game.”

Final score: 45-14 Michigan

“Can’t wait to watch them go out and ball!
Go Blue!”

Final score: 42-7 Michigan

“Go Blue”

Taylor has Michigan winning by 24 points

“Michigan wins by 24, and a great way for coach Moore to continue to show the program is great hands.”

– Enjoy more Michigan Wolverines coverage on Michigan Wolverines On SI –

Game Predictions: No. 9 Michigan vs. Fresno State

Three keys to a Michigan victory over Fresno State

Predicting every Big Ten football score in Week 1

Two days after severe thunderstorms knocked out power to a half-million Michigan customers, some of them are wondering whether they will receive the $38 utility credit that the Michigan Public Service Commission has set to help compensate them.

The short answer: Probably not.

There is still uncertainty about how and when the outage will be resolved, but the PSC confirmed with the Free Press on Thursday that it is likely — if the utility outage estimates and repair forecasts stay on track — neither DTE Energy nor Consumers Energy will be issuing many credits.

Both companies, when asked Thursday about credits by the Free Press, mostly sidestepped the issue.

What’s more, the lack of compensation adds to the concerns already swirling around the PSC, a state agency charged with regulating public utilities, and whether it is too close to the companies it is supposed to oversee and should do more to track, investigate and act on complaints.

Consumers Energy has said it hopes to have most repairs done Thursday; and DTE said Friday — at the latest.

As of 6 p.m., both utilities had made considerable progress on restoring power. Detroit-based DTE reported it was down to about 43,000 customers without power out of an estimated 300,000 on Tuesday, and Jackson-based Consumers Energy had about 18,000 more customers to reconnect out of about 200,000.

Customers are eager to have their power back on, but the thought of receiving no compensation isn’t sitting well with many of them who already feel that a $38 credit — which they explain doesn’t begin to cover what they lose in a power outage, especially during a heat wave — is insufficient.

“Into our second day of no power and now need to discard food from (the) freezer/refrigerator,” Doug Lombardi, of Livonia, wrote in an email he sent to the Free Press. “Suggest you do a follow up story on how and where to seek compensation for tossed food.”

And his reaction to the power outage was among one of more measured ones.

Michigan utilities under pressure

In the past few years, DTE and Consumers Energy have come under increasing fire from the public, nonprofit watchdog groups and even the state attorney general for a lack of energy reliability, which, in the freezing cold of winter or the boiling hot summer, puts Michiganders at risk.

Last year, the Free Press reported the two utilities were among the worst-performing utilities in the nation, ranked by how long it took them to get the lights back on after a power outage. At the same time, Michiganders also were paying more for electricity than their neighbors around the Great Lakes.

The criticism forced the Public Service Commission to change its utility credit guidelines, boosting the credit from $25 to $35, and now, $38, and requiring the utilities to pay them automatically, instead of making customers apply for them.

Moreover, an in-depth Free Press investigation found the PSC tends to lack decision-making transparency and, as a potential conflict of interest, gets 80% of its funding from DTE and Consumers Energy, which hold a near monopoly on providing electricity to Michigan residents.

Thursday, another Free Press investigation concluded that thousands of informal complaints lodged annually aren’t tracked well, and “most formal complaints against Michigan utilities are dismissed, and a handful of consumers have reached confidential settlements.”

The challenge now for Michiganders to get credits after this week’s ongoing outage is tied to the formula the PSC set for issuing them. The higher the percentage of customers caught in an outage, the more time a utility is allowed to restore power before a credit is required.

The measure gives utilities a grace period — 16 hours to four days — to make repairs.

The thinking behind this caveat is that more widespread outages require more effort to fix. The new guidelines, which rely on numbers reported by the utility companies, also call for utilities to credit more per day past the grace period when the grace period is exceeded.

But in this outage, based on the two utilities’ early estimates of how many people lost power — about 13% for DTE and more than 10% for DTE — and when it will be back on, there is a good chance each utility might avoid big credit payouts.

DTE said its goal is “to never have our customers in a situation where they incur the hardships that an outage brings or where reliability credits would have to be issued,” and Consumers Energy said “the discussion around outage credits really goes to a bigger issue over how well we keep the lights on for customers.”

Years of unclaimed credits

Outage credits have been around since the 1980s, as one of the measures the PSC has used to encourage utilities to enhance reliability.

But until last year, customers had to apply for them.

That meant millions in credits that customers were eligible for after frequent and long power outages didn’t get applied because customers either didn’t know the process or didn’t have time to apply and the money went unclaimed, according to a 2000 report by the Lansing State Journal.

That same year, the nonprofit Citizens Utility Board of Michigan also released a study that found when it came to reliability, Michigan’s utilities ranked among “the worst in the country.” It took days, for example, to restore power to DTE and Consumers Energy customers caught in a 2019 storm.

The Lansing State Journal — which, in addition to the Free Press is part of the Gannett network — noted the nonprofit study and interviewed the group’s executive director who called for changes to the credit policy. A year later, yet another storm knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of customers.

And this time, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel weighed in.

The state’s top law enforcement officer asked utilities to voluntarily credit customers affected by the outage and provide increased credits — the amount, then, just $25 — to help those who lost hundreds of dollars or more on food and hotel costs.

Adding to the pressure on the utilities, Nessel also published the results of a survey that ever since has been used by news outlets and consumer groups to question whether the credits are enough. It found 90% of the utility customers in the outage “lost between $100 to $500” and 35% “lost between $500 to $1,000.”

Amid the growing criticism, DTE said that it agreed to voluntarily issue $100 credits.

More: DTE: Power reliability must improve, outage cost estimate at more than $50M

It’s unclear whether the company would offer voluntary credits again.

When asked Wednesday by the Free Press about it, one of the corporate vice presidents acknowledged it could do better and said the company would have to have internal discussions, but did not commit to customer credits that weren’t required or rule it out.

Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com.