What time is it? Time for 'College GameDay' to make its way to L.A.
Patrick Kinmartin
Issue date: 4/8/04 Section: Sports
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Are you GameDay enough to help pitch a circus tent in the middle of a large university, get under it and join in pandemonium that has just about everything but lions, tigers and bears?
Are you GameDay enough to go on national television scantily clad, fully intoxicated ... and not the least bit worried that parents across the nation - including yours - are seeing how hard-earned money is being spent?
If you're a member of the growing USC faithful, you'd better be. "College GameDay," ESPN's half-football, half-frat-party morning show that travels to the biggest college football games across the nation on Saturdays in the fall, might be coming to Los Angeles soon.
ESPN's Mark Gross, coordinating producer of the madness, said earlier this week there's a chance the Oct. 9 USC-California game could bring the show's rock stars, er, hosts, Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit and Lee Corso, to the West Coast for only the fifth time since the show began traveling in 1993.
"That game is on our radar," Gross said, adding it will likely compete against other big college football match-ups that day, including LSU-Florida and Tennessee-Georgia, for the right to host "GameDay."
Every August, Gross sits down with Fowler, Herbstreit, Corso and many other members of the show on Mondays to discuss what the largest college football game between two schools will be that given week. They must choose where ESPN should ship "GameDay's" crew of more than 50 to set up a makeshift studio somewhere around tailgates on the home team's campus to do the weekly 90-minute show live.
By the week's end, the staff selects a school, rehearses the show and then begins the all-out circus. It has taped features, analysis, corky commentary from Herbstreit and Corso and just about anything else that comes with filming a television show - live! - with thousands of screaming students and fans in the background.