SEC Nation's first Saturday show originating from Auburn
On Tuesday ESPN announced that College GameDay will kickoff off the college football season broadcasting from the Cowboys Classic in Arlington, Texas which features defending national champion Florida State against Oklahoma State.
Wonder if that would be the case had Auburn hung on to win against the Seminoles in the Rose Bowl? Perhaps Chris Fowler, Lee Corso, Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard and David Pollack would be at Auburn instead.
Regardless, the Tigers season-opening clash with SEC West rival Arkansas won’t be without its own on-site pregame show. SEC Nation, the new SEC Network’s traveling pregame show originating from a different SEC campus each week, will be on The Plains for the first Saturday of college football.
Host Joe Tessitore will be joined by three commentators that have pretty good insight about the SEC. Radio show host Paul Finebaum, the voice of the SEC football fan, joins Tessitore along with two former SEC players: Heisman trophy winner and former Florida quarterback Tim Tebow as well former LSU defensive end and NFL veteran Marcus Spears.
Auburn hopes to continue to have a winning record when an ESPN produced show involves the Tigers. The Tigers are 8-7 when GameDay broadcasts from the site of an Auburn game, 5-3 when the show originates from Auburn.
On Aug. 30 Auburn fans can remind both Tebow and Spears that neither of them were successful when it came to playing at Jordan-Hare. The two were a combined 0-3.
LSU came to Auburn both times ranked in the Top 10 with Spears on the roster and lost. In 2002 unranked Auburn intercepted Marcus Randall four times, making his second start for the injured Matt Mauck, en route to a 31-7 shellacking of the No. 10 Tigers. Two years later Auburn, ranked No. 14 at the time, score a touchdown in the last minute, to defeat No. 4 LSU 10-9. In 2001, while hosting Tebow and the unbeaten and No. 2 Gators, Auburn scored 19 unanswered points to knock off Florida 27-17.