POCATELLO — If you thought college football has been starting sooner than ever in recent years and playing longer into the winter, you aren’t mistaken.

But Idaho State football is about to take the cake.

The road tilt at UNLV game has been officially moved to Aug. 23 instead of the original date of Sept. 13.

According to ISU Sports Information Director Jon Match, it will be earliest date a football game has kicked off in program history.

The reason for the change is that Allegiant Stadium, the home of the Rebels, will now host the Canelo Alvarez/Terence Crawford fight for the undisputed super middleweight championship of the word.

UNLV had set its football schedule before the fight was announced by the boxing promoters and sanctioned by the Nevada Boxing Commission, but the stadium has the right to make any changes to event dates as needed. In short, the championship fight has priority over the ISU/UNLV football game.

What this also means for the Bengals is that fall camp will now start on July 21 instead of the usual first week in August.

ISU Athletic Director Pauline Thiros confirmed the program will be getting some additional money because of the changes they now have to make.

“We are working through those costs together,” she said. “Our colleagues at UNLV have been good partners and these games are important to us, so we all work hard to collaborate when things take inevitable turns.”

The good news for Idaho State is that it will now have two off weeks during the 2025 season since it will not be scheduling another game on the original date of Sept. 13. The other weekend it won’t be playing is Oct. 18.

This marks the second schedule change overall from when the ISU football slate was originally announced, the first one being the game at Central Arkansas on Sept. 20 that was moved into the future and replaced with a home game against Lincoln University from California.

Here is ISU’s updated non-conference 2025 schedule:

• Aug. 23 @ UNLV
• Aug. 30 @ Southern Utah
• Sept. 6 @ New Mexico
• Sept. 20 Lincoln University