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Week 9 2014: College Gameday review! #getup4gameday #cfb

Posted on October 25, 2014 by gamedaycole

Welcome back everyone. The afternoon games are in full swing which means it is time for Cole’s College Gameday Review! This week’s edition of Gameday was coming at you live from Baton Rouge, where we will see the big matchup between Ole Miss and the LSU Tigers. Right out of the gate the celebration was started with a full pig being roasted immediately behind the Gameday stage, which led us to today’s Gameday Fun Fact! Did you know that Desmond Howard doesn’t “eat swine”? Now we know!

The rowdy crowd carried us through the show, which I can only attribute to the re-emergence of one DJ “Babi Mac”. We have done extensive research here in the lab (i.e. Googled it and looked at the first link) to find out that this Babi Mac is actually former Tennessee Lady Vol Cait McMahan who was added to the Gameday mix for some reason. However she ended up on Gameday, I still don’t get it.

With such a large and rowdy crowd today, we naturally had a few great signs. Highlights include “Ole Miss Defense runs like Obamacare website”, “Katy Likes Two Corndogs at Once”, “Colonel Reb voted for Obama”, and of course “Bo Wallace is uncircumcised”. However, today’s true winner was the sign which made a very brief, partially obscured appearance early on, reading “POOP BUTT>OLE MISS”. Congratulations good sir or madame.

Following up that lovely performance, we will go straight into the Sam Ponder Outfit of the Week! Jennifer complemented the outfit today, saying it was very cute. She liked the shoes and jewelry especially. Hey Sam Ponder, remember that if you’re reading this, please give a shoutout to your #1 fan, @GamedayJen.

You may have also noticed there is a quarterback guru pictured in the photo above. George Whitfield was back with more outfit confusion, although it seems to be getting better (he must read this blog). The jacket, while overly plaid, seems to fit better. All Jennifer could say was “there’s those F’in brown shoes again”. Keep working on it George. All you need to do is try and improve a little each week.

We then saw a feature on the head coach from Wisconsin-Whitewater, Lance Liepold, who has reached 100 victories faster than anyone in college football history. He has quite the impressive little record there at Whitewater, with 100 victories, 6 losses, and 5 national championships. One more loss than national championship. It seemed like a great little school with a great community surrounding him, so congratulations to Coach Liepold on his 100th victory.

Les Miles decided to join the show today, being interviewed by Sam Ponder. The first highlight of this interview was the purple track suit Coach Miles was wearing (pictured below). The second highlight was the corn dog discussion between Ponder and Miles. Les Miles says: “I have never personally tried corn dogs before, but I suspect they taste good”. This man is a true wordsmith. He could be a poet.

Now it is time for the Desmond Howard Michigan Pick of the Week! The Gameday boys were discussing this week’s big matchup between Michigan and Michigan State, and even had a nifty video montage of recent years between Michigan and “little brother” Michigan State. Kirk and Lee both decided that they would go with Michigan State in today’s game, and asked Desmond who he thought would win this one. He shuffled around nervously before declaring that he would be picking that game later on in the show. I guess we will just have to wait, so mark that down.

The Gameday boys then re-assembled as a whole group including David for this week’s overly casual roundtable segment. This week, our discussion centered around who the best one loss team in the country is and current playoff standings. YEAH, BUT WHO IS IN YOUR TOP FOUR???

Gene W. had a piece on Utah kicker Andy Phillips. Andy grew up as a skier, and even competed on the US junior national team. He passed on Olympic hopes to fulfill his Mormon mission, only to return and decide he wanted to start playing football at the age of 20. Yes, as in, never played football before he was 20. He decided it would be cool to be a kicker, and practiced untold hours on his own time before making it on the Utah squad as a walk-on. His first practices were the first time he ever wore pads, and he had to ask teammates about how to adjust his chin strap amongst other things. A pretty nice little segment about a unique individual within our great sport.

The Chef of the Week returned this week, featuring chef Peter Sclafani III along with his trusty sidekick simply known as “Big Ruffin”. It was a nice little spread, and “Big Ruffin” was pretty pleased with his own contribution of mini-corndogs.

Tom Rinaldi had a story about Bo Wallace. Apparently we’ve all decided that this year Bo Wallace is pretty good.

Rinaldi also had a piece entitled “Halloween, 1959” about the 1959 matchup between LSU and Ole Miss. Apparently Ole Miss was up 3-0 as time was winding down in the 4th quarter, when Billy Cannon returned a punt to seal the game 7-3 and also contribute to his Heisman winning season. Rinaldi said that many players from that Ole Miss team have never gone back to LSU’s stadium since that night, but they are apparently gathering tonight to come back for such a monumental game.

Now it is time for everybody’s favorite part of the show, the picks! Today’s celebrity guests were Jase Robertson and Willie Robertson from Duck Dynasty. This was Willie Robertson’s second appearance as a guest picker as you may recall. On this appearance, Jase seemed to be very up to date and knowledgable about current happenings in football, while Willie did nothing but call for upsets and pick against Jase. Lee Corso went so far as to say he had run out of NOT-SO-FASTs for Willie. However, when it came down to the business of the LSU game, Desmond went with LSU, as well as Jase and Willie both agreeing on the final game (in favor of LSU). Lee Corso donned the Tiger headgear, and the crowd erupted. Charley the Cat went with Ole Miss, so we have a chance to make up a game on Coach Corso today!

Corso takes LSU! (courtesy Gameday twitter)

Oh, we have time for an extra point today! Remember when Desmond Howard ducked the Michigan/Michigan State pick early in the show? Yeah, when he said he wouldn’t pick that one when they were breaking down the game because he would pick it later. Well they never mentioned the game again, and Desmond Howard managed to avoid breaking his contractual agreement with the Wolverines by not picking against them on Gameday. So let’s all bag on Desmond Howard for another week for being such a Michigan homer, and we will revisit this discussion next week! Enjoy your football.

Week 8 2014: College Gameday review #cfb #saturdayselections #getup4gameday

Posted on October 18, 2014 by gamedaycole

It is good to be back for another Saturday edition of College Gameday Review. This week’s edition comes to you live from Tallahassee, Florida for the big matchup between Florida State and Notre Dame. ESPN is trying hard to hype this up to the level of the 1993 “Game of the Century”, in which Lee Corso made his first ever proto-headgear-pick going with an FSU baseball cap to choose the Seminoles over the Fighting Irish. A lot of good quick clips from that week for the Gameday crew to reminisce about, such as Fowler’s jet black hair, Corso’s salt and pepper hair, Craig James’ presence before Herbie came in, and lots of football players wearing sweatpants.

Back to 2014. The show got off to a quick start with this week’s “JAMEIS WINSTON SCANDAL OF THE WEEK”. Mark Schlabach was interviewed remotely about the situation, for which he and Darren Rovell have been on the front lines regarding the situation. In case you haven’t heard, Jameis Winston is being accused of signing thousands of autographs for money. I for one am SHOCKED and cannot believe such a thing would go on in this sport. There wasn’t quite as much coverage of this scandal as I would have expected (judging by weeks past when entire shows were stopped down to talk Winston). My notes regarding this scandal include the following:

-Mark Schlabach was sporting a fresh haircut. This year, it seems that he is trying to move into hard hitting journalism, and he needs a haircut to match. No more shaggy Schlabach broadcasting his upset special of the week from his kitchen table each week. What a shame.
-Did Jameis sign all of that stuff for money? Probably. But I don’t think we will ever find a money trail or any proof. People comparing this to the Todd Gurley scandal need to realize that the Todd Gurley scandal allegedly has video proof of Gurley taking money for autographs. Winston’s scandal is nothing more than Darren Rovell pouring gasoline on a huge pile of speculation at this point.
-Every time I see Jimbo Fischer getting all worked up defending Jameis Winston, I get the feeling that there is someone off camera with a gun pointed at his head. I don’t think he believes himself when he is defending Winston, but he is going to go down with the ship at this point. I also happen to agree with him that there is no proof, not much evidence, no crime committed, and that people should perhaps wait until another self-serving investigation is completed before calling for suspensions.

Enough Jameis Winston talk. Let’s move on to something more fun. Like this week’s “SAMANTHAT PONDER OUTFIT OF THE WEEK” review with @GamedayJen. This week she was sporting something which Jennifer described as “classic, simple, and looks good”. Sam Ponder, if you are reading this, tweet at @GamedayJen to discuss fashion with your #1 fan in the world.

She also interviewed Jimbo Fisher about some stuff. This random guy also showed up behind Jimbo Fisher. No idea who he is or what he is doing, but pretty weird.

George Whitfield, noted QB guru and questionable wearer of fashion, was back this week. That means it is time for the “GEORGE WHITFIELD QUESTIONABLE OUTFIT OF THE WEEK” with Jennifer as well. This week we have determined that George Whitfield wears tiny suits. His suits look too small for him in the shoulders and back. He was also sporting a nice yellow rose on his lapel, a tweed tie, and another plaid shirt. Hard to see in this photo, but just go with it. Jennifer described it as “A plaid shirt with a tweed tie? Just No”. Whitfield made so more generic observations of the two QBs from this game. I believe it went “something something something Jameis Winston, but something something something Everett Golsen too”.

George Whitfield: QB Guru, not fashion guru

During one segment early on, Kirk Herbstreit stood up for about five or six minutes straight while behind the Gameday desk. This was really weird and I want to know what was going on because it seemed so out of place. Since we have no evidence, we will wildly speculate that he was about to tinkle his pants. After a few minutes, Fowler called him out on it and he sat back down.

During the first hour, Pollack replaced Corso as usual, and the picks came rapid fire again. The pace they were going at made me think it was because our guest pickers would be the tandem of Brett Favre and Ken Griffey Jr., so maybe they were going to be pressed for time in the final pick segment.

Later on in the show, DJ Babi Mac made another appearance which pleased Chris Fowler. Is she somebody’s niece on this show or something? No doubt, I am completely out of touch with today’s youth, but I have no idea who the hell Babi Mac is or why she is being pushed so hard on Gameday this year.

Gene W. had a piece on Notre Dame center Matt Hegarty, who was part of the 2012 team which lost the national championship game. Matt missed the championship game, along with much of the season, when he had a stroke during a team walkthrough in November 2012. Doctors were able to repair two holes in his heart, and he has returned this year as the starting center. His hope is that he didn’t miss his only chance at a national championship. Inspiring stuff about a good kid, who apparently now volunteers working with stroke patients in nursing homes.

Tom Rinaldi had a piece of his own about Art Briles, Gus Malzahn, and Hugh Freeze. All three coaches rose from the ranks of high school coaches to lead powerful programs in college, which I guess is a rarity these days. All I can think about when I see an Art Briles interview is that he just finished changing the oil on a ’57 Chevy out in a barn somewhere, wiped his brow off with an oily rag, took a sip from a glass Coke bottle, and came in to do the interview. He is so down-home.

Signs this week were everywhere, and the sign game was strong. A lot of funny signs made appearances, and a lot of raunchy signs made brief appearances. Notable signs include a Jameis Hancock signature, “Jeff Driskel paid me for his autograph”, the return of the Kim Jong Un sign where he is wearing FSU face paint, “Lou Holtz Splash Zone” and many more. However, we present to you a bunch of funny ones which we will not comment on because we are taking the high moral ground.

So now comes the time we’ve all been waiting for. Brett Favre apparently bailed on Gameday today (or had a mechanical issue with his flight), so today we only had Ken Griffey Jr. This week, instead of “NOT SO FAST”, Lee Corso issued strikes, balls, and foul-tips for Griffey’s picks depending on how much Corso agreed. David Pollack went with Notre Dame for the big matchup. Desmond picked FSU, along with Ken Griffey Jr. Corso flashed back to the ’93 FSU proto-headgear-pick and donned a black wig and FSU cap to make his selection.

Charley the Cat went with Notre Dame with HIGH confidence on this pick today. Or maybe she was just hungry? Jennifer took ND too, so our house is united.

I’d like to take this opportunity to attempt an extra point in this review. A recent disturbing trend has emerged with College Gameday selecting random guest pickers with no real affiliation to the schools competing at Gameday. Oh really, Katy Perry’s manager went to Ole Miss? I work with a guy who went to Ole Miss,so I guess I am now an official Ole Miss representative too. Kenny Chesney is from Tennessee? Makes sense that he previously appeared to represent Tennessee or Vanderbilt, but let’s feature him at South Carolina/Mizzou for being an SEC fan? Were we really in Mississippi for the last two weeks without Brett Favre making an appearance, but decided this FSU/Notre Dame matchup seemed more appropriate? He didn’t make it anyways, but the Ken Griffey Jr. connection to FSU is that he lives in Orlando? I guess I don’t get it. Gameday guest pickers have traditionally been from the home team (although occasionally a visitor) to get the crowd totally fired up by having their representative pick. I’m not saying it has to be the rule all of the time, but let’s just keep trying to make some real connection to the schools in question.

Also, how much longer will we have to wait for Burt Reynolds to make a Gameday appearance for FSU?

Week 6 2014: College Gameday Review #SaturdaySelections #GetUp4Gameday

Posted on October 4, 2014 by gamedaycole

I have always found it strange that of all the places College Gameday has visited throughout the years, they never managed to make it to The Grove in Oxford, Mississippi. Surely if someone had asked you (and you aren’t an Ole Miss follower) you would have guessed that they would have visited what some have called the Holy Grail of tailgating sites at SOME point in 2+ decades, but for some reason it never happened. Until today.

The show today was broadcasting live from the Grove, for the big matchup between Ole Miss and Alabama. As the show opened, we viewed shots of various tailgating scenes in the Grove, and we saw what I would describe as many large bottles of wine, champagne, beer, and various cocktails which make up the breakfast of any champions. The Gameday crew opened up the show looking incredibly sharp this morning, sporting nice southern suits and bow-ties. While they were all looking sharp, I thought we could expect a much stronger performance from Desmond’s suit game this morning.

While we are on the talk of fashion, let’s go straight to the “Sam Ponder Outfit Review of the Week featuring @GamedayJen”. Jennifer said “The jacket is nice, the skirt is bright and eye catching, the shoes (not pictured) went well with it, and her hair always looks good”. I think Sam Ponder may have a secret admirer.

The sign game this week was pretty good. Signs of note included one of Kirk Herbstreit’s face pasted on Colonel Reb (which I couldn’t get a clear shot of), “Welcome to the Grove. Please don’t poison our trees”, “Welcome people of Wal-Mart”, “If you can read this sign you’er clearly not a Bama fan”, but we had several winners this week.

After a commercial break, we were brought back to a Tom Rinaldi piece on Dak Prescott, Mississippi State QB, and how his tough upbringing has taught him to have a true work ethic. His mother Peggy was a single mother raising three young boys, and she taught them to work hard in life not through words but through actions as she worked so hard to support her children. Even with her work schedule of so many hours to keep food on the table, she never missed one of their football games. Dan Mullen told the story of his recruiting trip to see Dak, and how Peggy was very tough and demanding, but in a nice way. She told him that if Dak comes to Mississippi State, that she wants a coach who is going to make sure her son goes to class every day and gets good grades above anything else. Soon after deciding on Mississippi State, Peggy was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, and fought through a harsh battle hoping for a miracle. However, last November, Dak was called into the coaches’ office after a loss to South Carolina and told that his mother had passed away. After sitting out for a month with a hurt shoulder, his return saw him lead the Bulldogs to a victory over Ole Miss in the Egg Bowl. Inspiring stuff from Tom Rinaldi as usual.

In today’s overly casual roundtable segment (where they leave the desk and go sit in chairs ten feet away to discuss more football), Chris Fowler started off firing shots at Desmond and his love of Michigan. Fowler was holding a classy red solo cup having a drink, and told Desmond to take it because “you’ll need it… we’re talking Michigan”. The guys debated the Michigan situation with Brady Hoke, and more opinions were heard, but the highlight was Desmond staying true to his Michigan blood and being an apologist for Brady Hoke.

Gene W. had a piece on Ameer Abdullah. The gist of this segment was that Abdullah listens to John Mayer, he is small, he is good (Cris Carter said the most NFL-ready player since Randy Moss), and he is going to finish his degree in December. Good kid.

This week instead of a Tom Rinaldi Beatnik Poetry piece, we had the story of ESPN writer Wright Thompson and his family’s Ole Miss season tickets entitled “Section O, row 61”. He still holds the season tickets for the seats his father purchased some 40 years ago after painstaking research in the stadium to find the ultimate location. Lots of cool old footage from SEC games of the past.

Tom Rinaldi was back again later with a piece on Amari Cooper, who grew up in poverty in Coconut Grove, Florida. He was the son of a single mother with four brothers, and they were raised with a strong work ethic which drove him to the heights he has seen this year. Surely I’m not the only one who saw parallels to his earlier piece on Dak Prescott, as well as countless previous pieces about student athlete X overcoming poverty to become a star.

Other random thoughts and notes from today’s edition included a Cooper Manning sighting on the Grove, footage of Hugh Freeze dancing with his players, and today’s chef of the day, John Currence.

One other item I’d like everyone to keep an eye on is the continued momentum gains we are seeing from Tom Rinaldi. He no longer just does Beatnik Poetry and an occasional tear jerking segment. Now he is doing multiple segments, interviewing coaches, and taking us to and from commercial breaks occasionally. I have no real evidence to support this theory, but I think we may be seeing Tom Rinaldi being primed to fill Chris Fowler’s spot someday if Fowler ever decides to retire from his duties to focus on his duties as the new Brent Musberger, or covering big time tennis tournaments. Just keep an eye on this and we may revisit this in a few years.

Today’s show was a very football-centric show with so many great games on the schedule. There was no Babi-Mac, no George Whitfield filling a generic segment, no Bald Man on Campus, and surprisingly no Jameis Winston arrest stories this week. There was a brief discussion of the “SEC Swoop”, or as some prefer to call it, “Bama Bangs, as well as the fashion of today’s pageantry in the Grove. If you are unfamiliar with the SEC Swoop or Bama Bangs, it is basically the Justin Bieber starter kit you see below.

Now, I am certainly one who supports goofy tailgating attire to show your school spirit and celebrate the day, but being a man with little-to-no fashion sense, I have to speak up about the over-use of boat shoes in such a setting. I have three questions I would ask myself before wearing boat shoes out anywhere (if I owned any): Are you on a boat? Are you about to be on a boat? Were you just on a boat? If the answer is no to all three questions, let’s ease up on the boat shoes guys.

Alright enough fashion advice from someone with no fashion sense. Let’s get down to the business at hand, which is the picks. The boys on the show were once again going rapid fire with the picks today, which is incredibly exciting if you like hearing picks or if you run a blog dedicated to tracking picks. In “TODAY’S MICHIGAN PICK OF THE DAY FEATURING DESMOND HOWARD”, we saw Desmond Howard once again pick Michigan to overcome that 3 point spread against Rutgers, and go into New Jersey today to pick up a big(?) win over Rutgers. After last week’s pick, he is now 12-13 all time picking Michigan. I guess you have to keep taking shots at this point if you’re Desmond Howard. Anyways, this week’s special guest celebrity picker was Katy Perry, who is apparently a HUGE Ole Miss fan despite not going there and never having been to a college football game in her life as well as having no real connections to the school. She was escorted to the desk by roughly 20 state troopers, bringing Hot Toddys for the Gameday boys at the desk while wearing what can only be described as a chicken feather pink/purple football jersey. She proceeded to drunkenly pick games, ask if TCU/OU was “the game with the Cocks”, produce an oversized novelty pencil to point in Lee Corso’s face, throw corn dogs at the camera to indicate she likes Auburn over LSU, and pick Ole Miss to win today. She was asked if she was in talks to perform at the Superbowl, to which she replied that she may be in talks, but would never pay the NFL for that opportunity, so “the ball is in their field now”. Alright then. Desmond and Kirk both picked Alabama, as well as David Pollack. Charley the Cat went with the upset of Ole Miss over Alabama. Lee Corso’s big headgear pick saw him choose Alabama over Ole Miss, as he donned the elephant headgear. We closed the show as drunk Katy Perry pulled it off his head and threw it on the ground before throwing more corn dogs at the camera. A truly cringe-worthy guest picker. Enjoy your day and have a happy football!

Oh and don’t forget….