Daily Sports: The NFL Kicks Off Thursday Night

The 2013 NFL season finally gets underway tonight, with the cornerstone of Thursday’s daily sports agenda being the battle in the Rocky Mountains. The Baltimore Ravens meet the Denver Broncos in a rematch of last year’s epic second-round playoff game to start the year. Kickoff is at 8:30 PM ET on NBC.

TheSportsNotebook was busy yesterday getting ready for Week 1. You can read a preview of tonight’s Ravens-Broncos game. We also have previews of the four other marquee national games, starting late Sunday afternoon and going through the Monday Night doubleheader. And if you want to get up to speed on the entire Week 1 schedule, the 12 undercard games are also previewed.

College football shies away from competing with the NFL opener, and there are only a couple pedestrian games on tonight’s schedule, one of them at the FCS level. The normal weeknight game on ESPN is pushed to Friday night, when Boston College hosts Wake Forest.

And speaking of Boston, the first-place baseball team has a big series of its own that gets underway tonight. The Red Sox head to the Bronx for the first of a four-game series. Boston is holding a comfortable lead in the AL East, at least for the time being. New York is coming on strong in its pursuit of a wild-card spot. MLB Network is on the call in a 7 PM ET start.

TheSportsNotebook previewed the three marquee college football games in an ESPN Saturday tripleheader. At some point over the next two days, we’ll also add a look at the undercard games that are worthy of your attention. In the same Thursday-Friday window, we’ll also update the MLB playoff race and look at Saturday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series regular season finale in Richmond.