Well, ESPN continues to respond to Fox Sports. After Fox Sports announced a three hour Saturday morning college football pregame show to be hosted by College GameDay alum Erin Andrews, ESPN has announced that it will expand College GameDay to a full three hours on the Mothership. College GameDay had been three hours with the first hour airing on ESPNU which was originally hosted by Ms. Andrews and then Samantha Ponder last season after Erin left the network. Now, ESPN says the best pregame show on sports television will begin airing on its airwaves at 9 a.m. ET and run until noon.
This means Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit, Lee Corso and Desmond Howard will have some extra heavy lifting in the 9 a.m. hour.
And on August 31, the season premiere of College GameDay, the show will expand to its first-ever four hour show.
Here’s the announcement.
College GameDay Expanding to Three Hours on ESPN
Special Four-Hour Opener set for August 31 at Clemson
ESPN’s iconic college football pregame show, College GameDay, is expanding to three hours on ESPN for a 9 a.m. – noon ET block each Saturday during college football season. In addition, GameDay’s season opener on Saturday, Aug. 31, will be an unprecedented four hours (9 a.m. – 1 p.m.) of features, analysis and discussion from the campus of Clemson University. GameDay last visited Death Valley on October 21, 2006, the first and only time Clemson has hosted the show. The No. 8 Tigers will open their season later that night against the fifth-ranked Georgia Bulldogs during Saturday Night Football at 8 p.m. on ABC.
Hosted by Chris Fowler with Lee Corso, Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard and David Pollack with reporting by Samantha Ponder, Tom Rinaldi, Scott Van Pelt and Gene Wojciechowski, GameDay’s August 31 edition will preview all the day’s matchups in its longest installment to date leading into the Rice at Texas A&M game (1 p.m., ESPN).
After opening weekend, GameDay’s three-hour Saturday slot will be televised in its entirety on ESPN with the 9 – 10 a.m. hour hosted by Fowler and various segments anchored by Ponder. Corso, Herbstreit, Howard and Pollack will all contribute as well.
Lee Fitting, ESPN senior coordinating producer, said, “Anytime there is an increased appetite for college football, that’s a good thing for us. Fans tell us they can’t get enough GameDay, well, four hours in Week 1 should help them out. And now, with all three hours on ESPN for the remainder of the season, they never need to touch the remote.”
There you have it.
