ESPN’s College GameDay Built by The Home Depot travels to Oxford, Mississippi, for Week 3 of its 40th season, setting up live from The Grove on the Ole Miss campus. The show airs Saturday, Sept. 19, from 9 a.m. – noon ET on ESPN, ESPNU, Disney+ and the ESPN App, ahead of a highly anticipated primetime matchup as No. 8 Ole Miss hosts No. 7 LSU at 7:30 p.m. on ABC.
Morgan Freeman, Academy Award and Golden Globe Award winner and Grammy Award and Tony Award nominee, serves as celebrity guest picker in his first-ever College GameDay appearance. The Mississippi native and Ole Miss superfan joined The Pat McAfee Show Thursday to announce his role.
Saturday’s matchup carries rare historical weight. Lane Kiffin becomes just the second head coach in AP Poll history to face a Top-10 opponent he coached the previous season, joining Pro Football Hall of Famer Paul Brown, who coached Ohio State from 1941-43 before facing the Buckeyes as head coach of the Great Lakes Navy on October 21, 1944. Saturday also marks the first AP Top-10 matchup in the LSU-Ole Miss series since 1962, when John Vaught led No. 6 Ole Miss to a victory in Death Valley over No. 4 LSU and only the second AP Top-10 matchup ever played at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, the other coming in 2014 against Auburn. The home team has won the last six games in the series.
Ole Miss will host College GameDay for the third time. The last time the show originated from The Grove was in 2021, when then-Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin served as celebrity guest picker. Saturday marks Ole Miss’s eighth all-time appearance on the program. LSU makes its second appearance of the season and 37th overall.
Rece Davis is at the helm for his 12th season, joined at the desk by GameDay analysts Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard, Pat McAfee and Nick Saban. College football insider Pete Thamel, college football analyst “Stanford Steve” Coughlin and reporters Jen Lada and Jess Sims round out the GameDay cast for the 2026 college football season. Earlier this week, on Monday, Sept. 14, Herbstreit celebrated the 30th anniversary of his first College GameDay broadcast.
Coming off its most-watched season ever, College GameDay is off to another record-breaking start. Last week’s show from Texas delivered the program’s most-watched Week 2 episode on record, averaging 2.7 million viewers and reaching 3.4 million viewers in the final hour, outpacing the competition by 102%.
Show highlights & guests
- Ole Miss head coach Pete Golding joins College GameDay live on set ahead of the No. 8 Rebels’ home game against No. 7 LSU (7:30 p.m. on ABC).
- The GameDay Film Room with Nick Saban returns. This week, Saban breaks down how in-game coach-to-quarterback radio communication has revolutionized college football, with Lane Kiffin leading the way.
Features
- SABAN exclusive: College GameDay will offer fans a special sneak peek at SABAN, the upcoming six-part ESPN Original series chronicling the life, career and legacy of Hall of Fame coach Nick Saban. The series features hundreds of hours of never-before-seen footage from throughout Saban’s coaching career, along with extensive new interviews with Saban, Miss Terry Saban and more than 70 former players, coaches, colleagues and others who experienced his impact firsthand. SABAN premieres Thursday, Oct. 8, with Episode 1 airing at 6 p.m. ET on ESPN and all six episodes available at launch on the ESPN App.
- “Are You Ready?”: When Lane Kiffin first arrived at Ole Miss back in 2020, he was met with optimism and adulation. But things change, and this weekend when he returns donning purple and gold, the sentiments will be far different. Wright Thompson reports.
Pat McAfee’s “Kicking Is Easy delivered by The Home Depot” Contest
Pat McAfee’s “Kicking Is Easy” Contest, a fan-favorite segment, returns to College GameDay for its fourth season. Fans who arrive early will have a chance to be selected from the onsite pit and attempt a 33-yard field goal. Throughout his time on the show, McAfee has awarded more than $7 million of his own money through contest prizes and charitable donations. Full details, including official rules, can be found here.
Extra Yard for Teachers
The College Football Playoff Foundation’s Extra Yard for Teachers and ESPN’s Take Back Sports kicked off Extra Yard for Teachers Week, with celebrations running from Saturday, Sept. 12 through Saturday, Sept. 19. As in years past, ESPN is celebrating educators across its programming with on-air and social content, encouraging viewers to nominate outstanding teachers at CFP-Foundation.org. ESPN commentators will also distribute DonorsChoose gift cards to deserving educators, and College GameDayBuilt by The Home Depot will spotlight teachers during Saturday’s Week 3 show at Ole Miss. Together, the College Football Playoff Foundation and ESPN have invested more than $4 million since 2014 to support teachers and coaches.
ESPN College GameDay Scavenger Hunt comes to Oxford
The ESPN College GameDay Scavenger Hunt continues at Ole Miss, giving students and fans an interactive way to engage with the show throughout the week leading up to Saturday’s live broadcast. The contest opens Wednesday, Sept. 16, via a dedicated digital microsite, with three challenges from Wednesday through Friday that include snapping photos of campus landmarks and answering trivia about past editions of ESPN College GameDay for a chance to win.
Fifteen winners will be selected at random from participants who complete all three tasks. Each winner, plus one guest, receives access to a premium seating area near the front of the College GameDay broadcast within camera view and exclusive College GameDay merchandise. Additional participants will also win official ESPN College GameDay merchandise.
ESPN collaborated with experiential agency Assembli on the interactive digital and on-site fan experience, and with Flowcode connecting the initiative inside the new College Football ESPN Fan House.
Countdown to GameDay returns
Harry Douglas and Harry Lyles Jr. return for their fifth season as co-hosts of ESPN’s social and digital pre-pregame show, Countdown to GameDay, with Sims joining the duo this season as a co-host, reporting live from the College GameDay site each week. The show is available weekly at 8:20 a.m. across ESPN on YouTube, Facebook and the ESPN App.
Marty & McGee live from Oxford
Marty & McGee Presented by Old Trapper will be live Saturday afternoon (noon-12:45 p.m.) from Boure off the square in Oxford, Mississippi as Marty Smith and Ryan McGee set the scene of Lane Kiffin’s return to Ole Miss. Smith and McGee meet at the intersection of southern lifestyle and college football to bring viewers the latest headlines, Hillbilly and otherwise, across the SEC landscape.