Richmond-Sam Houston rescheduled for Friday

(STATS) - After being postponed by Hurricane Harvey this past weekend, the season-opening game between national FCS powers Richmond and Sam Houston State has been rescheduled for Friday night at Baylor University.

Kickoff will be 7 p.m. ET at McLane Stadium in Waco. Admission will be free of charge and broadcast coverage of the game is still developing, Sam Houston officials said.

The first-ever matchup between No. 3 Sam Houston and No. 7 Richmond was originally scheduled for Aug. 31 at Bowers Stadium in Huntsville, but later moved up to this past Sunday to be broadcast on ESPNU. After this coming weekend, neither team had a mutual bye on their schedule, so the possibility existed the game would be canceled because Southeast Texas continues to deal with historic rain and flooding.

"I want to thank Senior Associate AD Greg Hinze for his work with David Walsh, the interim director of athletics at Richmond, for their work to make this game happen," Sam Houston athletic director Bobby Williams said. "Hinze deserves a lot of credit for making this game work. With everything that has happened to our area since Friday, and to still be able to come up with a solution for this game to be played is a credit to the hard work he has put into this."

Baylor will open its season at home on Saturday against Liberty. Despite the short turnaround, Baylor officials agreed to host the Richmond-Sam Houston game, which is a meeting of two national quarterfinalists last season.

Sam Houston's campus, located about 70 miles north of Houston, has been closed by the hurricane and is not scheduled to reopen until Sept. 5.

The Bearkats had home games canceled in 2005 (Missouri State) by Hurricane Rita and 2008 (Prairie View A&M) by Hurricane Ike.