TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Garnet and gold took the field at Doak Campbell Stadium as Tallahassee geared up for opening weekend of the 2026 college football season, with fans already packing College Town ahead of kickoff of football season.<\/p>\n
Florida State\u2019s season opener and Florida A&M\u2019s home opener night created a major opportunity for local businesses, as visitors arrive from around the state and beyond to spend money on food, drinks and merchandise.<\/p>\n
A downtown block party in the College Town area drew fans, students and visitors tonight, with live music and crowds using the event as a warmup for gameday.<\/p>\n
Mantello Anchilla, an international sophomore at Florida State, said the start of the season brings a shared energy across the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone here is either going to go to a tailgate or a bar or something but yeah everyone is with the same vibe and just expecting the Noles to win,\u201d Anchilla said.<\/p>\n
The first Saturday of college football in Tallahassee is also building excitement among Florida A&M Rattlers fans, with alumni and supporters shopping for gear from vendors such as Tiajuana James-Dozier, who has been a licensed FAMU vendor since 2003.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is great for Tallahassee, not only do we have the local alumni and supporters that support but this place is going to be flooded tomorrow with people from Atlanta, people from Orlando, people from Miami trying to get on the Hill and support their beloved FAMU,\u201d James-Dozier said.<\/p>\n
Some visitors traveled long distances to be part of the weekend. Three New Mexico State Aggies fans said they made the trip to Tallahassee to enjoy College Town and spend money locally while looking for something to eat.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to get plane tickets and a hotel for the night so that all rapped up to a not insignificant chunk of change,\u201d Dylan Hutchison said.<\/p>\n
With crowds arriving from far and near for the Seminoles and Rattlers games, College Town businesses could be among the biggest beneficiaries of the opening weekend surge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Garnet and gold took the field at Doak Campbell Stadium as Tallahassee geared up for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-386191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}