Wisconsin AD Barry Alvarez says he thinks College GameDay will be at Lambeau Field in week one for LSU vs. Wisconsin. ESPN’s marquee college football show is by far the sport’s best and most beloved, and its weekly destinations serve as high honors for host schools.
LSU-Wisconsin isn’t Week 1’s best game, but it’d still be the right choice for ‘GameDay’
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LSU vs. Wisconsin, huh? That’s the game from this loaded weekend?
Either Alabama vs. USC in Dallas or Oklahoma vs. Houston in Houston would guarantee a ranked-vs-ranked matchup (based on the way-too-early-rankings consensus), and Georgia vs. North Carolina in Atlanta seems likely to fit that bill as well. While LSU seems likely to rank in the preseason top five, Wisconsin enters with no particular hype at all, ranking No. 37 in Bill C’s preseason projections.
There’s also Clemson-Auburn, UCLA-Texas A&M, and an Australia game, for the truly daring road show. (And Notre Dame-Texas got moved to Sunday.)
It’s not like LSU-Wisconsin’s a bad game. But based on the teams alone, there are better choices. So if GameDay picks this game, here’s what likely pushed it ahead of those other neutral-siters: Lambeau. The home of the Packers is surely the most iconic American football stadium the show’s never been to, and when will it ever have another chance?
GameDay’s done plenty of neutral-site games. How many Bama games at shiny NFL stadiums can one possibly endure? They almost always lack any sense of campus spirit (except when, like, Iowa completely took over the Big Ten Championship). I don’t think that’ll be a problem this deep in Wisconsin territory, with LSU fans also willing and able to show up with large pots of steaming sea creatures.
If we think of this TV show as a TV show, and not as some sort of public service whose job it is to tell us which of our favorite teams is the most deserving of attention, it makes total sense. We’ll all continue to think of it as both things, though. That’s fine.
So, here are some bad headlines. Baylor’s ongoing sexual assault scandal now includes an ESPN investigation into an “overtaxed” department’s long-delayed response to allegations and an arrest of Shawn Oakman for the same charge. Tennessee’s now includes prosecution experts raising concerns with the Knoxville PD immediately looping Butch Jones in on an investigation. More on that, in really simple terms.
USC hired an inexperienced alum for an important job. The only thing that can change this habit is the universe’s decline into entropy.
Bill C team of the day: dare you to bet against NIU winning the MAC West for the seventh year in a row. See what happens.
Donald Trump, a reality TV star who’s conducting a social experiment to see how many gaffes one man can possibly weather, asked Pittsburgh how Joe Paterno’s doing. Nobody understood it.
Let’s podcast with SI’s Andy Staples about this satellite camps business. Andy’s good at having interesting thoughts on issues you swear you’ve already made up your mind about.
Draft stuff!
- Ole Miss’ Laquon Treadwell is not only a top WR prospect in the NFL Draft. He’s also good at basically every football task.
- Alabama’s Derrick Henry is so huge, people thought he’d make for an NFL linebacker even when he was in high school.
- Figuring out what to make of Christian Hackenberg is now the pros’ problem.
- Stephen White’s entertaining scouting report of Corey Coleman ties into something interesting about Baylor’s offense: receivers are quite often told not to block.
- Texas Tech’s top skill prospect credits an ACL injury with making him NFL-tough.
- One of the most fascinating players: Wisconsin’s QB-turned-safety-turned-WR who’s been listed as a tight end prospect and otherwise.
- Shutdown Fullcast brought on NFL expert Ryan Van Bibber and ended up talking more actual football than any other episode in program history, which still isn’t saying much.
Commit Of The Day goes to the Pac-12 for the second day in a row, as four-star Cali WR Terrell Bynum chooses Washington.
Florida and Miami might meet in Orlando in 2019. That’s far away, but we’ll take all the rivalry we can get.
Spring games are bad. Let’s replace them with something way more interesting that’s good for everybody.
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