In college football it doesn’t get much bigger than ESPN’s College GameDay.
So will Kirk Herbstreit, Lee Corso and company be making a trip to Heinz Field this season?
ESPN has already selected Notre Dame-Michigan for its initial stop of the upcoming season. The question is: where will they be for Week 2?
This morning, @CFBHome listed the biggest Week 2 matchups and not surprisingly, the Pitt-Penn State game was listed.
Biggest Week 2 Matchups:
Penn State at Pitt
Clemson at Texas A&M
UCLA at Oklahoma
Georgia at South Carolina
USC at Stanford
My immediate thought is that USC-Stanford and Georgia-South Carolina won’t make the cut because there isn’t a national draw to those games. Both will be good games but what’s the big appeal for them?
On the other hand, the other three games have things that you can point towards or promote.
The Clemson-Texas A&M game will be Jimbo Fisher’s first big game at his new school and he’ll be taking one of the top current programs in college football.
The same sort of thing goes along with the UCLA-Oklahoma matchup as Chip Kelly returns to the college game and goes up against the powerful Oklahoma Sooners in Norman, Oklahoma.
Then, Pitt-Penn State will be given consideration because of the strong history of the matchup. The city of Pittsburgh is a place ESPN doesn’t get to often The last time College GameDay was in Pittsburgh was back on September 3, 2005 for the Pitt-Notre Dame game. Also, ABC has already announced that this game will be their national game of the week with a kickoff of 8 PM.
Another factor could be that this will be the last time that Pitt will host Penn State for the forseeable future.
Pitt fans will obviously believe that Heinz Field should be a slam dunk choice for the ESPN executives but a lot goes into this decision and it won’t be an easy one.
In the end, the decision will likely come down to Pitt-Penn State and Texas A&M-Oklahoma.
The final decision will be made on September 2.
