Today College Gameday (brought to you by the Home Depot obv) is coming at you live from Gainesville, Florida for the big matchup between South Carolina and Florida. Our blog is coming to you live on the road from Jennifer’s parents’ house where we will be partying all day. I don’t have quite as big of a crowd in the front lawn as they do for Gameday in Gainesville, and the only sign someone brought was Jennifer’s sign that says “Pollack waxes his eyebrows” so that’s weird. This week’s fun facts brought to you by Chris Fowler are that Gameday has broadcasted live from a Florida Gators game 33 times in the past both home and away, and Lee Corso is 0-2 this year picking against the Gators. Take note gamblers.
We opened the show this morning with Fowler, Herbie, Desmond and David doing a slightly extended segment from their usual open. This made Jennifer crazy because she is used to Des, David and Samantha Steele running the show for the first hour on ESPNU. Since we were playing catchup on the DVR, we had to zip through some of today’s content like generic coach interviews with Will Muschamp and Steve Spurrier. I’m sure they had a lot of great insight about how our team has to go out and play hard, focus on today, establish the run and limit turnovers. Samantha Steele was looking good this morning, and Jennifer was quite impressed with the outfit today. “Best outfit of the year so far” was the consensus from the women polled this morning, i.e. Jennifer.
Samantha Steele did a live piece with Brian Griese who is broadcasting the LSU/A&M game today. Always great to get the breakdown from the only person on ESPN who is picking under 50% for the season. We got a replay of the Oregon State head coach Mike Riley piece from last week’s show. It was good last week, but this week it was fast forward time. As we closed the first hour we got the usual picks from David and Desmond. David is still the conductor on the Beaver Train. Desmond Howard refuses to pick Oregon State to win, but still gave the Beavers the kiss of death and picked Utah to lose. Both guys took Florida over South Carolina, and it was unusual to see neither of them getting booed.
As the main show opened up on ESPN, Chris Fowler took over and the main crew sent David Pollack to go use the internet. This week he was getting some grilled gator meat from a guy in a funny hat to chow down on while tweeting with all of us rubes. Jennifer noticed that many of his segments lately have been food related, so this might become a feature of David Pollack eating food as well as using the internets. I’m particularly amused from the girl in the background who is very unimpressed with this segment.
The special segments today included a full Tom Rinaldi quiet talking piece about Notre Dame QB Tommy Rees. They covered his ups and downs, going from starter to backup to closer to whatever you want to call him. Its pretty amazing how far Notre Dame has come this year running the two quarterback system. I have to think this will run out of gas eventually, and whichever QB is running the show when they lose is going to take some serious heat. We also got a piece from Gene W. about Jeff Driskell and the comparisons to Tim Tebow. Apparently Driskell grew up overseas like Tebow, except it was on a military base in Japan. He can sing Silent Night in Japanese, but refused to, even with Gene W. offering him $10 to do so. Good move, as the NCAA would have immediately declared him ineligible for taking improper benefits. Other notes include Driskell being homecoming king in highschool, dating the Gators’ cheerleading captain, and he is pretty much Tebow without all of the Heismans and National Championships. Sad to say we didn’t get a Bald Man on Campus with Scott Van Pelt.
My favorite piece of the day was a segment about the traveling trophies in college football. It talked about a bunch of the rivalries between two teams, where the winning team holds a special trophy for the year. These include a big axe for Wisconsin/Minnesota, a big jug for Michigan/Minnesota, the Stanford/Cal trophy with a questionable final score from THE PLAY, OU/Texas fighting for a golden cowboy hat, and the Indiana/Michigan State rivalry winner being awarded with the Old Brass Spittoon. Obviously my favorite is the Battle of the Piney Woods, with a trophy that you pretty much might expect for two East Texas teams (source).
After that, Desmond Howard and Chris Fowler took a break to play with toys. This had something to do with Colin Klein AKA Optimus Klein.
Signs of the day included the return of the I’M ASIAN sign, complete with several gigantic heads from the Asians holding the signs. “Garcia graduated with a .2 BAC” is a close second for the day, but today’s offical sign of the day is one I’m sure everybody saw.
But now its time to get down to the business at hand. We are here for the picks, and picks we got. Here is Saturday Morning’s picks for your record. Today’s special guest celebrity picker is Florida Gator and Olympic medalist Ryan Lochte. He looked like he was lost finding his way to the set, picked Auburn when they asked him about LSU/Texas A&M, but was entertaining for sure. To nobody’s surprise, he picked Florida over South Carolina.
Herbie, Desmond and David all picked Florida as well. Would Coach Corso be the only soul to pick South Carolina over Florida? Would he fake out the crowd? Could he pick against Florida for the third time this year? The answer is no, as he threw on the Gator head and was handed a small albino alligator which Herbie was terrified of. Herbie does not like animals, and its just a matter of time until someone gets bitten by one of these animals. Corso also gave us a quick confusing FSU Tomahawk chop. Anyways, here’s how the headgear looked. Enjoy your day!
