ESPN’s College GameDay will be in Happy Valley this Saturday morning in the leadup to the titanic Oregon-Penn State showdown on Saturday night.
It’ll be a top-10 showdown with a 7:30 p.m. ET kickoff on NBC, but many hours before that, all eyes will be on the College GameDay broadcast. The legendary Lee Corso might be retired, but a special feature of the weekly pregame show remains — bringing out a guest celebrity picker who is relevant to where the show is coming from that particular Saturday morning.
For the Week 5 broadcast, the guest picker choice is another legend — former Penn State star linebacker LaVar Arrington, who terrorized opposing quarterbacks and offensive players during his 3-year run at Penn State from 1997-99.
The College GameDay social media account was all fired up to announce who would be joining the crew on Saturday in State College. Naturally, there will be a traditional Penn State White Out for the Big Ten showdown between the third-ranked Nittany Lions and sixth-ranked Ducks, but Arrington will be sure to bring the noise on Saturday morning.
Arrington was a 2-time All-American at Penn State in 1998 and ’99. During his final season in State College, he captured the Butkus Award, Chuck Bednarik Award, and Jack Lambert Trophy, leaving a lasting imprint as 1 of Penn State’s legion of standout linebackers.
On Saturday morning, he won’t be on the field at Beaver Stadium, but he’ll once again be the center of attention in Happy Valley.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
