Florida-Georgia was the obvious stage for College GameDay this Saturday. It’s the only matchup on the slate featuring two top-20 teams, and Atlanta would have made plenty of sense for ESPN’s Saturday morning show.
Instead, GameDay is going to Indiana for the Hoosiers’ matchup with the Minnesota Golden Gophers, a game featuring a Minnesota team that was blown out by Mississippi State and a spread sitting around 20 points. That choice left some fans grumbling online. But after what unfolded with Pat McAfee last week, the snub is easier to swallow.
The issue started with a student-made video that Utah social media accounts shared while GameDay was in town. In it, students were asked for their thoughts on the show’s visit. Several of them joked about McAfee’s tendency to take off his shirt and poked fun at his over-the-top style when making picks.
It was mild stuff, hardly the kind of criticism that should set off alarms. Still, McAfee clearly took it personally. During the broadcast on Saturday, as he made his pick, he referenced the clip and closed with this line:
“Thank you, guys. I’ll never see you again, hopefully."
Then, on Monday, he went back on the air and doubled down on the irritation:
“And then I thought to myself, has anything like really scary happened at like a college gathering in the state of Utah recently? Like, do we think we should be amplifying reasons for why people hate my guts as a university? I don’t know.”
That reaction says plenty about the place McAfee has carved out for himself on GameDay. He’s not there to elevate the sport, and he’s not really there to sharpen the conversation.
More often than not, he’s there to make himself the story. When he goes viral, it’s usually because of the spectacle, not because he added anything meaningful to what was being discussed.
That’s the frustration. McAfee’s act is built around the idea that any attention is good attention, and that anyone who pushes back must simply be jealous or bitter. But from the outside, it looks less like confidence and more like a refusal to accept even the lightest criticism.
That’s a far cry from what GameDay used to feel like. There was a time when Lee Corso helped turn the show into a celebration of the university being featured. Now, too often, the attention seems to shift toward McAfee himself.
So even if Florida-Georgia is the better football game by a mile, maybe there’s some relief in seeing GameDay stay away from Atlanta. Leave the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party to the adults.
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LSU Fans Hate What Happened To This Alabama Showdown
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There is also a longer-term sting for LSU fans beyond the start time. This will be the final annual meeting before the SECs revised scheduling rotation breaks up the rivalry, and the two teams will not meet again in Baton Rouge until at least 2030. For a fan base that prefers the atmosphere of a night game against Alabama, the afternoon slot only adds to the frustration around a matchup that already carries extra weight. [Read more 🡒]