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‘College GameDay’ was long college football’s best friend. Now it’s a bully
BySteven Godfrey
The Washington Post
Steven GodfreyOct. 4, 2023 at 2:35 pm
In 2015, I profiled veteran anchor Rece Davis as he prepared to take over hosting duties for “College GameDay,” ESPN’s wildly successful Saturday morning college football pregame show.
The piece focused on Davis replacing the show’s original host, Chris Fowler, a task most would assume daunting. But “GameDay” executive producer Lee Fitting wasn’t having it. He waved off any dramatic stakes about swapping anchors on such a popular show:
“People ask me that all the time: Why does the chemistry work?” Fitting said then. “And I don’t really have the answer; it just does. We don’t take ourselves too seriously. We’re not bigger than the sport. ‘GameDay’ works because everyone has the show first. Period. And the sport of college football first. Period. It’s the college football fan first.”
What bothered Fitting was that “GameDay” had become the focus of attention, not the game it was built to celebrate.
Eight years later, “GameDay” has a significantly different atmosphere. Fitting is gone, mysteriously let go at the 11th hour before this season started. Among other changes, ESPN is gambling on the addition of Pat McAfee, a former NFL punter turned seasonal pro wrestling personality and football analyst. Currently, McAfee is waging a weeks-long public war with Washington State, one of the two Power Five college football programs left homeless by the machinations of conference realignment.
It’s a plight that makes Wazzu the least deserving target for any ESPN pundit in this current moment. Sadly, Washington State is also the one school that might best define what once made “GameDay” something greater than the sum of its television parts.
A quick bit of history: Beginning in 2003, fans of the usually moribund Washington State football program were determined to get that season’s nine-win Cougars team some love on “GameDay.” They brought a WSU flag to the show’s set, which was in Texas that week.
A tradition was born, and through a network of Wazzu fans across the nation, Ol’ Crimson has flown at every taping of “GameDay” since, no matter the location. Just because. Over time, the stunt became part of the fabric of the show: You knew that no matter where the set was raised, the flag of the most geographically isolated Power Five school would be flying, and when “GameDay” finally arrived in Pullman, Wash., in 2018, it was a celebration.
Back to the current state of affairs: The trouble started when Lee Corso, the 88-year-old longtime “GameDay” analyst, fumbled through a remark about the Sept. 23 game between Oregon State and Washington State, the two members of the Pac-12 who were left behind by realignment.
Corso referenced the upcoming game live on the air as “The Nobody Wants Us Bowl,” a phrase Washington State Coach Jake Dickert heard as “The Nobody Watches Bowl.”
After beating the Beavers later that day, Dickert lashed out at Corso and ESPN, explicitly blaming the latter for the sudden implosion of the Pac-12. He’s not wrong: In these matters, the network operates with a mafioso’s deftness, never committing the act of realignment directly but strongly “encouraging” those who do from the next room over.
Dickert wasn’t alone in his criticism. Former Washington State quarterback Ryan Leaf, one of the program’s most famous alumni, spoke out about the incongruence of ESPN’s fan-centric, on-campus brand bullying a school otherwise helpless to its circumstances. Leaf’s comments irked “GameDay” stalwart Kirk Herbstreit, who continued the argument on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
While embarrassing to varying degrees all around – Dickert’s misreading of the quote, and Herbstreit’s need to white knight for his international cable conglomerate bosses – all parties involved could have reconciled and moved on. Certainly, the old “GameDay” ethos would have demanded it. Dickert even apologized publicly.
Instead, McAfee pushed the argument further last week during “GameDay’s” recognition of Ol’ Crimson, jeering loudly over Davis and company, yelling “WHO CARES? WHO CARES?” to a canned laughter response. He then carried his beef onto his daily talk show (airing, of course, on ESPN), decrying Washington State’s “sensitivity.”
In his defense, it’s possible McAfee thinks he is doing what he was hired to do, given his parallel career in WWE. In pro wrestling, a scripted feud is meant to elevate both characters in conflict. There’s a logic there that elevating a rivalry by increasing its vitriol draws attention, which is a form of investment in the subject. And there’s also the whopping $85 million ESPN reportedly threw at McAfee, a deal struck amid waves of layoffs. He has to assume he isn’t being paid to go unnoticed.
But this isn’t pro wrestling; this is just punching down. There are very real circumstances facing Washington State and Oregon State, many of which ESPN helped create.
Up to this point, ESPN’s editorial stance on its corporate effect on the sport has been to play dumb, as exemplified by an Aug. 26 “GameDay” segment by Wright Thompson. In the piece, he claimed “every school that sacrificed history and tradition to find a richer conference did so in an attempt to survive.” That’s a fundamentally false statement that indirectly insults the audience by assuming we’re stupid. Now, “GameDay” has evolved from being indirectly insulting to directly insulting in a matter of weeks.
Is McAfee screaming at a school flag on a cable TV show some kind of unconscionable sin? No, but it reads terribly. It’s one thing to operate as an unseen financial force ripping up the fabric of a sport to streamline your holdings. It’s another to point and laugh at the orphan you created, and it’s even worse when your millionaire talent is offended that the orphan is angry about its new predicament.
It’s hard to imagine that happening on the old “GameDay.” There are a handful of great television shows covering sports. None carried the fully formed identity of “College GameDay.” None has transcended the format, let alone in such an honest way, by being so present for and reverent of its subject’s myriad quirks that it’s divinized right alongside the sport it loves as much as the fans do.
Years of media coverage detailing the logistics required to deliver such a carnival to every odd corner of the country built the show’s value proposition, so much so that notoriously tribal college football fans celebrate “GameDay” arriving in their town as if they have already won something that weekend.
And for a long time, they had – “GameDay” came to see their team, not yours. No matter where the trucks pulled up, fans happily met the program on its terms, turning out before dawn with posters and face paint to assist in the evangelism.
You felt good watching “GameDay,” and when the show visited your school, you felt great. But more importantly, you felt validated. Even if you cheered for a perennial loser or just some forgotten directional nobody in this big, messy sport, “GameDay” built its mythos on celebrating you for celebrating that.
How does a tradition like Ol’ Crimson persist? Because they were told they mattered.
This story was originally published at washingtonpost.com.
