What’s College GameDay’s plan for the fall? Kirk Herbstreit shares the latest on ESPN’s pregame show
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College football just wouldn’t be the same without College GameDay to start off every Saturday of action.
The good news is, one way or another, the executives at ESPN are committed to bringing College GameDay to your television this fall and the show is even planning on hitting the road for the upcoming season.
During a recent appearance on Nashville-based 104.5 The Zone program “3HL,” GameDay host Kirk Herbstreit shared the latest on the fate of the show this fall.
“I was on a call this morning, for that, everything is just tentative, but we’re really doing everything we can, or at least our bosses are, to try to give the fans the closest thing that we can get them to what you’d expect from GameDay — which means trying to put it on the road,” Herbstreit said on the show. “I don’t think they’re going to have fans, obviously at GameDay.
“We’re going to try to have some fun with, kind of like what you see with the NBA, some of the virtual stuff. You know, if we’re talking about Clemson-Florida State, maybe have fans from Clemson and Florida State on monitors where they’re going crazy – kind of cheering on their team.”
Considering all the issues some colleges are currently experiencing with students gathering in large crowds, it’s no surprise to hear that GameDay won’t feature live crowds this season. While that will take away some of the show’s charm, at least ESPN is willing to bring in virtual fans that you know will be holding up creative signs when featured on the show.
Herbstreit also mentioned the fact that while the easy thing would be to do College GameDay from home, ESPN is committed to taking the show on the road for now.
“They’re coming up with all kinds of different ideas to try to do the best that we can to get through this global pandemic, and at the same time, be GameDay — and talk about college football and try to do it in a way that our fans are accustomed to seeing which is kind of like a tailgate leading up to their afternoon of games,” Herbstreit added. “So, I was happy and kinda proud of that.
“The easy thing to do would be for my to be in my basement, Coach (Lee Corso) in his house in Orlando, Des(mond Howard) in Miami, (David) Pollack in Athens and Rece (Davis) in Connecticut, all of us just kind of sit there and do our show. We could easily do that. But they’re going, at least going in, they’re going to try to put the show out on the road and kind of see how it goes.”
Credit ESPN for doing what they can to make sure the best pregame show in sports not only stays on the air this season but manages to hit the road for this unusual college football season.
A graduate of the University of Tennessee, Michael Wayne Bratton oversees the news coverage for Saturday Down South. Michael previously worked for FOX Sports and NFL.com
