Rece Davis defends College GameDay Week 4 location selection
By Jacob Moss
Published:
ESPN’s iconic College GameDay crew is heading down to South Beach in Week 4 for an in-state matchup between the No. 4 Miami Hurricanes and the Florida Gators, and their choice of venue has stirred up all sorts of controversy.
Many fans of the programs and of college football in general have expressed confusion as to why GameDay elected to broadcast from a matchup that is more than likely going to be a blowout, as opposed to a much more compelling game like the top-20 clash between the No. 20 Indiana Hoosiers and the No. 9 Illinois Fighting Illini or No. 17 Texas Tech vs. No. 16 Utah.
Common sense would seem to dictate that a ranked matchup between 2 programs firmly in the mix for a College Football Playoff bid would be the far more logical choice to host College GameDay than a game between a top-5 program and an unranked opponent who holds a 1-2 record.
As written by Awful Announcing’s Sam Nuemann, though, longtime program host Rece Davis disagrees with this notion, and he firmly defended the production crew’s decision to choose Florida-Miami over Indiana-Illinois on Wednesday afternoon.
“We want to find the best storyline of the week,” Davis explained. “Now, a lot of times, people look at that and say that always has to be the game between two teams that have the highest ranking, if you have a ranked versus ranked game. But, it’s a little bit more than that… “I think (Miami) is the place to be this week. They’ve looked really, really good. You’ve got that aspect of it. And then the last two games that Florida has played have been really disastrous. First, from a self-inflicted wound(s) to the penalty standpoint in the loss to USF. And then the multitude of turnovers they had against LSU. So, that’s a little storyline, too.”
Davis isn’t likely to persuade many Hoosier or Illini fans with his defense, but he’s also been doing this for a really long time and understands the decision-making process better than just about anyone.
Who knows, Miami and Florida could put on a game of the year caliber performance on Saturday night. If the Canes do go out there and proceed to hammer the Gators, though, then there are sure to be plenty of people circling back to these comments in the aftermath.
