Glen Powell is heading back to “College GameDay” for another Austin spotlight.
ESPN announced that Powell will serve as the celebrity guest picker when the show comes to town this weekend for the Ohio State-Texas matchup. It will be his second turn in the role, and this time the stage is even bigger: No.
4 Texas hosting No. 1 Ohio State.
The setup is simple enough. The Buckeyes opened their season with a 56-3 win over Ball State, while the Longhorns rolled past Texas State, 59-7. Now the two teams meet in a top-five clash in Austin, with ESPN setting up at The University of Texas on Saturday morning.
This is also a rematch of sorts. The teams last played in Week 1 of the 2025 season, when then-No.
3 Ohio State beat No. 1 Texas at Ohio Stadium.
Ohio State went on to reach the College Football Playoff, while Texas ended up in the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl.
ESPN PR confirmed the return with the note: “Austin, Texas is on deck for @CollegeGameDay 🤘
🏈 Live from @UTAustin for a Top 5 Week 2 showdown between No. 1 @OhioStateFB & No. 4 @TexasFootball
⭐️ Glen Powell returns as guest picker
Saturday | 9a ET | ESPN, ESPNU, @DisneyPlus, ESPN App”
You’ll have to wait until Saturday to see how Powell and the rest of the crew come down on the game, though ESPN’s Paul Finebaum already weighed in earlier in the day and said he believed Arch Manning would block out the noise and take care of business on Saturday.
Powell’s first run as a guest picker came on September 10, 2022, when Alabama visited Texas. He went 7-5 that day.
He predicted a big performance from Bijan Robinson, but Robinson finished with 57 yards and one touchdown on 21 carries. Alabama edged unranked Texas, 20-19, behind Bryce Young’s 213 passing yards and a touchdown, while Jahmyr Gibbs added 96 all-purpose yards and caught the scoring pass.
Powell, 37, has said he grew up in Austin watching “College GameDay” with his dad, and later described his first appearance on the show as the most excited he had ever been to do anything, even after being cast in “Top Gun: Maverick.”
He also made an impression that day by wearing a mullet in honor of Quinn Ewers, who still had one at the time.
In Other News...
Texas May Get An Unexpected Boost Before Ohio State
Texas got a bit of encouraging news this week as Derrek Cooper moved from an early injury concern to a possible game-day option for the showdown with Ohio State. The running back left the season opener with an ankle injury, and Steve Sarkisian had previously suggested Cooper would be in a boot for the foreseeable future, which made the early outlook sound pretty grim for the Longhorns.
Now, the possibility of a quicker return has changed the tone around his status, even if it still comes down to a last-minute decision. Cooper has been seen as a valuable short-yardage piece, and his reputation has been helped along by positive evaluations from both teammates and scouts, so Texas will be watching closely to see whether that unexpected boost materializes in time for one of the biggest games on the schedule. [Read more 🡒]
Urban Meyer Sees Ohio State Texas Coming Down To One Big Play
Urban Meyers take on the Ohio State-Texas matchup was simple enough: it should be tight, and the kind of game decided by a single moment rather than a long stretch of dominance. He pointed to the quarterbacks, Julian Sayin and Arch Manning, as the central figures in a meeting between two teams that both rolled through their openers against overmatched competition, and he also acknowledged the boost Texas gets from playing at home.
Meyer stopped short of treating the Longhorns home-field edge as enough to swing his prediction, even while describing the contest as close to a toss-up. The bigger picture is what makes this one so interesting for Texas: a marquee nonconference game, a quarterback spotlight, and the kind of early test that can turn on one play, one mistake or one timely drive. [Read more 🡒]
Arch Manning Faces A Very Different Ohio State Test This Time
Arch Manning and Julian Sayin met a year ago as two of the most closely watched quarterback prospects in the sport, and the game mostly belonged to the defenses. Since then, both quarterbacks have moved past the label of promising newcomers and into a stage where coaches are talking about confidence, command and the way each has grown into the job.
This time, the matchup carries a different feel because Texas is not walking into the same kind of mystery it faced before. Manning has a year of experience behind him, Ohio State has a clearer read on what he can do, and the Buckeyes challenge is less about surprise than about whether they can again make him uncomfortable when the spotlight is brightest. [Read more 🡒]