College GameDay Makes Return Stop at Alabama

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College GameDay Makes Return Stop at Alabama

Photo of Rachel Margolis Siegal Rachel Margolis Siegal Follow on Twitter October 18, 2016
Tuscaloosa, AL - November 7, 2015 - University of Alabama: Coach Nick Saban and Kirk Herbstreit on the set of College GameDay Built by the Home Depot

Downloadable ESPN Images of College GameDay: http://bit.ly/GameDayPics

ESPN College GameDay Built by The Home Depot – college football’s longest-running and most-celebrated pregame show – will return to Tuscaloosa, Ala., for the 13th overall time, this Saturday, Oct. 22, in advance of No. 6 Texas A&M at No. 1 Alabama. The weekly show airs from 9 a.m.-noon on ESPN and will originate from the Walk of Champions outside of Bryant-Denny Stadium.

The six-time Emmy Award-winning show  is hosted by Rece Davis, who is joined by analysts Lee Corso, Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard and David Pollack, as well as contributors Chris ‘The Bear’ Fallica, Jen Lada, Samantha Ponder, Tom Rinaldi, George Whitfield and Gene Wojciechowski.

College Football Live will air from the set on Friday with Ponder, Howard and Pollack (1:30 p.m., ESPN).  SportsCenter’s Matt Barrie and Marty Smith will also contribute from site throughout the weekend.

Corso Facts:
Corso began making his entertaining end-of-show headgear pick of the team he thinks will win the game at the GameDay site, marking 20 years this season. Week 8 will be headgear number 283 for Corso, as he is 188-95 all-time in headgear picks. The phenomenon began October 5, 1996, prior to the Ohio State-Penn State game in Columbus, Ohio when he put on OSU’s “Brutus Buckeye” mascot head to show his pick to win the game – watch here.

  • Corso has put on Alabama headgear more than any other team (24 times) and is 16-8 when picking the Tide, however he is just 3-3 the last six times he has picked the Tide.
  • Corso has picked against Texas A&M twice, including Alabama’s 49-42 win in College Station in 2013. He did pick Texas A&M to beat Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 2012 (the show was not in Tuscaloosa that day, it was a pick made during our picks segment).
  • Corso is 5-2 in headgear picks this year and has won three straight. Last year he was 2-5 through seven weeks. Lee’s last four-game headgear winning streak came in weeks 7 through 11 in 2014.
  • He has picked the favorite 11 straight years in Week 8. However three of the last six years has seen the underdog win outright in the Week 8 game from which GameDay has originated.

‘The Bear’ College GameDay Fun Facts:

  • This is the 13th time GameDay has been to Tuscaloosa (ninth time since 2007).
  • This is the 19th time GameDay has been to the site of the No. 1 team in the country playing on its home field. AP No. 1 is 17-1 in those previous 18 games with Oregon’s 17-14 loss to No. 14 Stanford in 2012 the lone defeat.
  • Each of the last three sites from which GameDay has originated has had a game decided by seven points or fewer – including OT games each of the last two weeks. The show has never had a stretch of four consecutive weeks in a season which it attended a game decided by seven points or fewer.
  • Each of the last five on-campus matchups between top-6 teams has been won by the home team, including Clemson’s win over Louisville three weeks ago. Of those five games, four were decided by six points or fewer.
  • Alabama is currently a 17-point favorite over Texas A&M. This is the largest spread at a GameDay site between two Power 5 teams since the 2014 season opener when Florida State beat Oklahoma State 37-31 as a 19-point favorite.

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Photo of Rachel Margolis Siegal Rachel Margolis Siegal Follow on Twitter October 18, 2016
Photo of Rachel Margolis Siegal

Rachel Margolis Siegal

As part of the College Sports PR team at ESPN, it has been an exciting adventure for me since I joined the worldwide leader in July 2010, working on college football, college basketball, college lacrosse and WNBA properties. I began my love of sports as the manager of several high school sports teams and continued that hobby into college. While at Quinnipiac, I worked in the Sports Information Department, which led me to a summer internship at the New Haven Ravens, a AA baseball team, and an eventual job with the Athletic Communications Department at the University of Connecticut. After my five-year stint at Connecticut, I spent six years as Director of Communications at the BIG EAST Conference in Providence, R.I. before joining ESPN.
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