Fansided

College GameDay pulling double-duty in Week 1

By Jonathan Bass

Oct 4, 2014; Oxford, MS, USA; Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit of ESPN College Gameday after the game picks prior to the Mississippi Rebels game against the Alabama Crimson Tide at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports
Oct 4, 2014; Oxford, MS, USA; Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit of ESPN College Gameday after the game picks prior to the Mississippi Rebels game against the Alabama Crimson Tide at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports /
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ESPN’s College GameDay will pull double duty on Labor Day Weekend to open Week 1 of the season.

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If you live in the the greater Dallas or Blacksburg areas, buckle your seat belts, because on Labor Day Weekend ESPN’s College GameDay is coming to your city. That’s right, the Worldwide Leader’s college football tentpole will be pulling double-duty to open the season.

On Monday afternoon College GameDay announced that it would open the season at the Cowboys Classic in Arlington, where the Alabama Crimson Tide and Wisconsin Badgers will square off in a banner SEC-Big Ten matchup.

And then, just as Ohio State and Virginia Tech fans were ready to tweet their displeasure (the defending champs open on the road against the last team to beat them, and that’s not a headliner?!), ESPN had to drop a “not so fast” on the college football landscape. Since the Hokies and Buckeyes will face off on Monday evening, College GameDay will roll from Texas up to Virginia for the Labor Day blowout.

The games themselves have plenty of individual story lines – Alabama’s QB battle, Wisconsin ushering in the Paul Chryst Era, Ohio State kicking of a road to repeat without suspended Joey Bosa, Virginia Tech trying to right the ship in what could be Frank Beamer’s last season – but the real intrigue of the weekend lies at the feet of College GameDay.

For the first time in show history, Chris Fowler will not play conductor for the freewheeling program. The venerable host has moved on to perform more commentating for ESPN, and in his stead sits Rece Davis. In Davis the show has a more than capable new leader who can step into the live television cauldron of madness; however it’ll nonetheless be fun watching him govern a ship that was sometimes even a bit out there for the battle-tested Fowler. Life has come full circle for Davis, an Alabama alumnus who will now open this new chapter of his career by featuring his alma mater.

ESPN’s College GameDay will air the season’s first episode on Saturday, September 5, with action kicking off at 9 a.m. ET.

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