If you follow college football you know that every Saturday morning you wake up Rece Davis, Kirk Herbstreit and the forever famous Lee Corso. Every week they travel to a big college football game and in front of huge crowds of the local fans with outrageous posters talk about the upcoming games for the day and feature stories on the athletes that we watch. I love College Gameday and always will but one thing has always bothered me about the show. I am tired of seeing Alabama, LSU, Oregon and the big guys. Every week they go to the “biggest game” normally a matchup between two top 10 or top 25 teams and this makes sense, but there are always those weeks in the season where the schedule doesn’t have any great matchups yet they go to the big schools and show little love to the small guys.
Since 2000 College Gameday has done 232 shows and 29% of these shows have been at the all-powerful SEC schools. Alabama has had the most appearances with 17 and I think I speak for a majority when I say I have seen enough of Tuscaloosa, I have seen enough of Gainesville, and Baton Rouge. I demand Pullman, Washington and I almost got it this past Halloween weekend, but once again my dreams have been crushed. First thing I do Saturday morning when I see the shot of the crowd on Gameday is find Ol’ Crimson. Since 2003, a streak of 170 consecutive games, the Washington State school flag has traveled back and forth across the country flying high and proud by some Washington State alum yet Gameday has never shown Pullman the love and been there! Why am I the only one outraged by this! If you put in the work to organize a 12 year tradition of being at every College Gameday broadcast, becoming a fixture of the show, why can’t ESPN show you some love and go for one show to Pullman.
Every college football fan has their own list of the stadiums and games they want to go to, mine starts with Ole Miss and visiting “The Grove” which is a top 5 college football experience. I understand the hypocrisy that my first choice of a game is to go to an SEC school but it wasn’t until last year that Gameday finally made it to “The Grove”. Number two on my list is to go to in my mind the greatest rivalry in college football, the game I am speaking of is the Army-Navy game. This game is the last game of the regular season every year and if it isn’t on your bucket list you need to re-evaluate your views on college football. Yet Gameday has been to this game once since 2000. Two weeks ago Gameday came through for me and went to Harrisonburg, Virginia for a matchup between Richmond and James Madison both schools are in the FCS (Football Championship Series) the league under the top schools who are members of the FBS (Football Bowl Series), it was James Madison’s first appearance on Gameday. The crowd was huge and the fans were going crazy. In 2013 and again in 2014 Gameday went to Fargo, North Dakota to showcase North Dakota State and the great scene of downtown Fargo. People were hanging out of windows, on roofs of buildings, and filling up the streets. This is what college football is about, these players and fans are there for the love of the game.
I want to make a challenge to ESPN and the producers of College Gameday for the next season. I’ll give them four weeks where they can go to the big schools but for the other eleven go somewhere new, go to the Pullman’s, the Harrisonburg’s, the Temple’s of the college football world, you have the power to showcase the campuses and cities that many people will never get to see. MAKE IT HAPPEN!