College GameDay announces celebrity guest picker for Week 9 show at Vanderbilt
By Andrew Olson
Published:
Nate Bargatze will help the College GameDay crew pick the biggest games of Week 9, including the ranked showdown between No. 10 Vanderbilt and No. 15 Mizzou. ESPN’s traveling pregame show announced Bargatze as the celebrity guest picker on Thursday.
It will be Bargatze’s second appearance on the show. The comedian was previously the celebrity guest picker in Tuscaloosa on Nov. 4, 2023, when Alabama hosted LSU.
This is gonna be good
— College GameDay (@CollegeGameDay) October 23, 2025
Excited to have comedian and Vanderbilt fan @natebargatze return as our guest picker this week pic.twitter.com/NY95l1n6mz
GameDay has upset some fanbases in recent weeks by having celebrity guest pickers that are not fans of the host school. Bargatze, though, is a Vandy fan through and through.
As noted by The Vanderbilt Hustler, Bargatze, a Nashville native, has deep ties to the program. Ronnie Bargatze, Nate’s second cousin, was a Vanderbilt assistant basketball coach in the 1970s before serving as color commentator for over 3 decades. Nate Bargatze’s mom also worked in the Vanderbilt ticket office for more than 10 years in the 1990s. Last year, Bargatze was hosting Saturday Night Live when Vanderbilt upset then-No. 1 Alabama, and gave the Commodores a shoutout during the closing segment.
Saturday’s show will be live from Wyatt Lawn, beginning at 9 a.m. ET. Bargatze will join host Rece Davis and analysts Desmond Howard, Pat McAfee, Nick Saban and Kirk Herbtreit at the desk.
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
