College GameDay (football)

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College GameDay
Genre college football
Starring Chris Fowler, Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit
Country of origin Flag of United States United States
Production
Running time 2 hours
Broadcast
Original channel ESPN (1987-)
Original run 1987 – Present

College GameDay is an ESPN show covering college football. It first aired in 1987 with Bob Carpenter as host and Lee Corso and Beano Cook as analysts. Beginning as a more-or-less routine pre-game analysis of college football games, the show would undergo a radical transformation beginning in 1993 as the show began incorporating "live" broadcasts. The official name of the show is College GameDay built by The Home Depot. There is a separate radio broadcast, ESPN Radio College GameDay, on ESPN Radio.

Today, the only original cast member remaining is Lee Corso. Chris Fowler serves as host and Kirk Herbstreit, former Ohio State quarterback, serves as Corso's counterpart and foil. Craig James, currently with ESPN on ABC, was on the show in the mid 90's. Desmond Howard and Rocket Ismail serve as frequent contributors. Steve Cyphers is usually featured as a reporter. Nick Lachey joined the crew as a contributor during the 2005 season. Doug Flutie joined in 2006. Discussions are often held between the GameDay cast and studio analysts, including Lou Holtz and Mark May. It's not uncommon for Auburn alumnus Charles Barkley to appear (via phone or at site) to discuss Tiger football.

GameDay began its 20th season on September 2, 2006. The show now airs live for 2 hours, from 10am-noon ET.

Contents

[edit] History

In 1993, GameDay began broadcasting live from outside a stadium hosting a game most Saturdays. The selected stadium is usually hosting one of the biggest matchups of the day, regardless of whether the game airs on an ESPN network. The first show "on the road" took place at South Bend, Indiana for the match up between #2 Notre Dame and #1 FSU. The show takes on a festive tailgate party atmosphere, as thousands of fans gather behind the broadcast set, in view of the show's cameras. Many fans bring flags or hand-painted signs as well, and the school's cheerleaders and mascots often join in the celebration. The flags are not limited to the schools playing in that day's featured game: during the 2005 season one fan sent Washington State Cougars flags to alums local to Gameday for that day, to hoist in the background in an effort to bring the show to Pullman, even though the show never went to a game where the Cougars played[1]. Crowds at GameDay tapings are known to be quite boisterous and very spirited.

The show's current intro and theme music is performed by country music duo Big & Rich, who perform their 2005 crossover hit Comin' To Your City with revised lyrics that mention several top college teams and a guest appearance by Cowboy Troy.

Corso picks Miami to upset Virginia Tech: note the head of Sebastian the Ibis.
Corso picks Miami to upset Virginia Tech: note the head of Sebastian the Ibis.

Typically, the show will end with Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit issuing their predictions for that day's key matchups, finishing with the game to be played at the stadium hosting GameDay, for which Corso signifies his prediction by donning the head piece of the mascot of his predicted winner. On occasion, when no suitably important game is available, it will originate instead from the ESPN studios. (Herbstreit, who in 2006 became a game analyst, usually on ABC Saturday Night College Football, is not allowed to make picks for games at which he is assigned due to parent company Walt Disney Company's conflict of interest rules.)

College Football GameDay was also a source for many arguments regarding the purported East Coast bias: From 1993 until 2004, GameDay had only been to two regular season games on the entire West Coast (1998 at UCLA and 2000 at Oregon). Given the popularity of the show and the media coverage it brought to the highlighted game, teams and fans of the West Coast teams felt that the show was only magnifying the perceived problems with excess media focus on East, South and Midwest games; ESPN attributed its lack of West Coast games to the need for a very early start time (07:00 AM PST) and an alleged lack of high quality matchups[2]. However, since the 2004 season the show has originated from West Coast/Pac-10 schools four times, nearly as many as the previous ten years.

The show's current primary sponsor is The Home Depot. The secondary sponsor for many of the featured segments is Pontiac.

On November 4, 2006, Chris Fowler did not host the show for the first time in 16 years. Rece Davis, host of College Football Final filled in for him. Fowler was on assignment, hosting ESPN's coverage of the Breeders Cup from Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky.


[edit] 20 Anniversary Memorable Moments

During the 2006 season, as part of College GameDay's 20th year anniversary, they brought back some of the most unforgettable moments in the show's history. Some of the clips include:

[edit] Locations[3]

All game-time rankings are ESPN/USA Today (Coaches Poll). If a listing is blank, that week's show originated at the ESPN studios.

[edit] 1993

[edit] 1994

[edit] 1995

[edit] 1996

[edit] 1997

[edit] 1998

[edit] 1999

[edit] 2000

[edit] 2001

[edit] 2002

[edit] 2003

[edit] 2004

[edit] 2005

[edit] 2006


[edit] Also See

[edit] Segments

  • By the Numbers: This segment appears twice in the show, when they examine various number of games by the numbers.
  • GameChanger: At the end of the show, Fowler, Corso and Herbstreit all pick a player that they think will have a game changing performance. This segment is sponsored by Pontiac.
  • Saturday Selections: This is the most famous segment of College GameDay, when Corso and Herbstreit make their predictions on the top games in college football. This also includes the game at which GameDay is present, when Lee Corso sports the head of the mascot whose team he predicts to win that game.
  • Speed Drills: In this segment, Fowler throws about six or seven questions at Corso and Herbstreit to answer in 60 or 90 seconds.
  • Spirit Meter: This segment, which was taken from the basketball version of College GameDay, looks to see how loud the crowd behind them really is. In its short existence on the football version, the loudest so far has been at Clemson University, set on October 21, 2006 at 117 dB.
  • Trick of the Trade: In this segment, Desmond Howard is joined by either Lee Corso or a player to break down a play that a team runs so well and how to stop it.
  • Upset Special: This is at the end of each hour when ether Corso or Herbstreit predict an upset to happen in a big game. Corso usually makes his at the end of the first hour and Herbstreit makes his before the Saturday Selctions, at the end of the second hour.
  • What 2 Watch 4: This appears twice throughout the program, when they run down all of the big games and examine them.

[edit] Missing highlights from Insight Bowl

As the show is a preview program of a sport that plays games only once a week, College GameDay rarely shows highlights of games that were recently completed. But on December 30, 2006, ESPN showed clips from four of the previous day's five bowl games. The only game missing was the Insight Bowl, which was the setting of the biggest turnaround game in college bowl history (Texas Tech 44, Minnesota 41 in overtime). Host Rece Davis would only cite "contractual obligations," but it was apparent that NFL Network, which televised the contest, would not allow the show to use its footage. (CBS did allow use of highlights from the Sun Bowl, the only other game on the schedule that ESPN did not telecast.)

Although there has been no official explanation, it is possible that NFLN considers GameDay to be a magazine show (GameDay does have at least one long-form segment a week) and may have denied ESPN the clips on the same basis that NASCAR did for the former ESPN2 show RPM 2Night. Other prima facie evidence showed up on other occasions during the 2006-07 bowl season when ESPN folded other bowl recap programs under the SportsCenter umbrella, as SportsCenter is clearly a "news" program under the NASCAR (and possibly NFLN) definition.

Ironically, Davis was the anchor of the last edition of RPM 2Night, which aired on November 16, 2003.

[edit] Spin-offs

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/columns/story?columnist=maisel_ivan&id=2573344
  2. ^ As Mark Gross, coordinating producer of GameDay, noted: "You're asking a thousand people to show up 12 hours before the game starts [. . . ] By no means are we ignoring (USC). We always discuss the possibility. But the time is something to think about." Patrick Kinmartin, What time is it? Time for 'College GameDay' to make its way to L.A., The Daily Trojan, April 8, 2004.
  3. ^ http://filebox.vt.edu/users/bkalb/ESPNCollegeGameday/ESPNCollegeGamedayHistory.htm
  4. ^ Some fans, particularly in the SEC, were upset when this game was chosen over comparatively higher ranked match-ups of (at the time ranked) #6 LSU at #3 Auburn; #11 Michigan at #2 Notre Dame; and #7 Florida at #13 Tennessee. The choice was notable because ESPN, which runs College GameDay also runs the college sports programming on sister company ABC (both are owned by The Walt Disney Company); of the four games, only the #19 Nebraska at #4 USC game was on ABC while the others were on rival networks CBS and NBC.[1]
  5. ^ Rece Davis filled in as host; Fowler was assigned to cover the Breeders' Cup horse races that same day, missing his first GameDay broadcast in 16 years.
  6. ^ The location of the upcoming broadcast is posted weekly at http://sports.espn.go.com/espntv/espnMicrosite?showID=FBCG

[edit] External links

[edit] See also

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