signs – Page 2 – Cole's Gameday Blog

Week 8 2015: College Gameday review! #cfb

Posted on October 24, 2015 by gamedaycole

Welcome back to the return of our inconsistent and way overdue College Gameday review. We missed the last few weeks to a lot of important business going on (i.e. laziness) and we are glad to be back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Today’s broadcast was coming to you live in color from Harrisonburg, Virginia for the matchup between FCS powerhouses the Richmond Spiders and the James Madison Duke Dogs. After some quick research, it looks like James Madison has an enrollment of 20,181, and judging by the scene out there today every single one of their students were on hand for this broadcast. I thought the NDSU crowd of two years ago was the biggest I can remember seeing, but this may have topped it.

As the show got underway, we were introduced to some woman named Margo who teaches English in Spain. Margo crowdsourced a plane ticket home to JMU for Gameday today. That is dedication.

One note about today’s schedule is that Desmond Howard was particularly giggly during today’s show. Enjoying the Desmond Howard over-laugh is one of the truly great pastimes of any College Gameday connoisseur and today did not disappoint. Jennifer said that maybe he took one too many uppers after the Michigan disaster last week.

Sign game was on point this week. Highlights included “Sober as Sarkisian”, “Lou Holtz parties with Lamar Odom”, “Todd McShay is a Commie”, multiple signs referring to Richmond only eating plain Pop-tarts, and some guy who printed his impressive resume as a sign.

And of course, courtesy of the official College Gameday reddit account:

They recycled last year’s segment by Gene W. about FCS players who made it big in the NFL. Or maybe he rewrote it from this year. Either way I enjoyed it, even though there was a distinct lack of Sam Houston State talent such as Josh McCown, Dustin Long, Rhett Bomar, or Guido Merkens.

They had a segment breaking down down the Michigan Meltdown or whatever you want to call that Michigan State/Michigan finish from last week. Apparently Rece and Kirk shut the game off early thinking it was over, and we all remember Desmond Howard cursing the Wolverines on the sidelines when he tweeted the following:

Now it’s time for VIDEOS!!!

Today’s most touching piece was the story of Princeton offensive lineman Mason Darrow, who is the first openly gay division 1 player to take the field. Check out the full video HERE!!!

Another “story” piece was reliving the story of that Michigan State Miracle mentioned earlier, which can be found HERE!!!

And finally a piece on Hunter Knighton, who almost died of a heat stroke during practice one day. Check it out HERE!!

Also, we had a bizarre moment when Sam Ponder was interviewing JMU head coach Everett Withers. After the interview, he announced to the team that they would be wearing old school helmets. That’s pretty cool, but the team and crowd went BANANAS when he showed it off.

Other notes from today’s show:

Bear’s Bank was 10-10-1 heading into the show today, where he took Miami Fl with the points, Vanderbilt and the points, and layed the points with USC. However, his ESPN Chalk record against the spread was 30-16 heading into the day. In other words, he is printing free money on ESPN Chalk, but be careful with the Bear’s Bank.

The Sam Ponder outfit of the week was a nice one. Jennifer says “I like the skirt, I like the sweater, and I like the shirt underneath. Overall it is an excellent look. I really like Fall Sam Ponder”.

Apparently Richmond bought a spider to bring for Gameday today so they would have a mascot on hand.

George Whitfield and Rece Davis did their regular segment where they uncomfortably walk through the crowd while breaking down quarterback play. This one actually had a great highlight for once, when the ESPN cameraman fell down going up the stairs and chaos ensued.

https://twitter.com/mikedyce/status/657924872350253056

When it came time to make some picks, today’s guest celebrity was country music singer Dierks Bentley. Corso was conspicuously absent from the set during the entire pick segment. However, Herbie read off Corso’s notes for all of Corso’s picks and it was actually pretty funny. Apparently in the USC/Utah game, SOMEBODY KNOWS SOMETHING when it comes to that spread, and that SOMEBODY was identified as Chris Fallica I guess because he ate 3.5 points early this week, and ate even more laying 6.5 today. Anyways, when it came time to pick the big JMU/Richmond game today, Desmond, Kirk and Dierks were in agreement that JMU would take the victory today. The camera then cut to the JMU campus where Lee Corso emerged from a grand hall, presented by trumpets and streamers while dressed as James Madison before putting on the Duke Dog headgear. I did not think I would write the previous sentence when I woke up this morning. Anyways, pretty funny stuff and a white knuckle ride as Corso walked down stairs unassisted. This marks the second time Corso has dressed up in costume as a founding father, with his previous time being Ben Franklin for the Harvard/Pennsylvania game of 2002. Jennifer and Charley both went with JMU as well, making it a clean sweep in the predictions this morning. Enjoy the rest of your football night.

Lee Corso takes James Madison in epic fashion in today's @ChevyTrucks #SaturdaySelections. pic.twitter.com/30wpTiQejG

— College GameDay (@CollegeGameDay) October 24, 2015

Charley the Cat picked James Madison today for all interested parties #JMUGameDay #cfb #cfbpicks #richvsjmu pic.twitter.com/VKovHPMXeW

— Cole (@gamedaycole) October 24, 2015

Week 1 2015: College Gameday review! #cfb #getup4gameday

Posted on September 5, 2015 by gamedaycole

I know this is coming out a little bit late, but welcome back to our weekly College Gameday review! Week 1 was broadcasting to your living room in full color from Sundance Square in Ft. Worth, Texas, where the Gameday boys were preparing for tonight’s big game between Alabama and Wisconsin. The intro song continues to be revamped each season, sliding into more and more mediocrity, but I’ll be damned if it still doesn’t get me jacked up every Saturday morning.

Right out of the gate you may have noticed that Rece Davis is now piloting the show in place of Chris Fowler, who has been called in for play-by-play duties full time on Saturday nights. Many of you may not have noticed the difference, as many claim Davis and Fowler are actually one and the same. Come to think of it, have you ever seen the two of them in the same place at the same time?

Anyways, upon opening the show, a few kind words were said by Rece Davis about Chris Fowler. Not enough can be said about Chris Fowler’s impact on College Gameday, but there is nobody better to fill those shoes than Rece Davis. The kind words extended by Davis were agreed upon by all of the Gameday crew, but this took an awkward left turn as Kirk Herbstreit boldly proclaimed that there is NOBODY better in the business than Chris Fowler. He then backtracked and let us know there there is ALSO nobody better than Rece Davis.

As the show got under way, it has become apparent that ESPN is fully embracing the gambling on college football games this year. Two years ago you never heard anything about point spreads, totals, or covering except vague references to “the experts” predictions from “out in the desert”. Last year they started at least acknowledging the spreads, but this year they are all but making and taking bets on the show. Those of you watching the weeknight games this week may have seen the birth of the “Cover Alert” to go along with the Upset Alert. Gameday has now introduced a new feature called “Bear’s Bank” in which Chris ‘The Bear’ Fallica provides three of his best bets for you with his patended “Bear Bucks”. This week he took the Alabama/Wisconsin under, Texas A&M minus the points, and Arkansas St to cover against USC. This segment was also stopped down by Herbie who pointed out that Fallica was breaking Gameday dress code by wearing shorts. The biggest takeaway here is that Fallica has HUGE calves.

As we get into the sign game this week, the competition wasn’t as strong as some weeks in the past, but we still had a few highlights. We had the return of the always-beloved “I’m Asian” sign, the “Kendal Briles was adopted” sign, “Saban pays for Tinder”, and “Gus Malzahn’s name was on Ashley Madison”. Here’s some of those signs. However this week’s co-signs of the week are the following:

and…

Early in the show there was a short piece on the move made by Mike Riley from Oregon State to Nebraska. He is very mild mannered in case you forgot that from similar segments of years past. In fact, he is basically the antithesis of Bo Pelini in every way possible. Even though Nebraska is off to a rough start losing to BYU today, let’s all root for Mike Riley for being such a nice guy.

Without a doubt the best segment of the day was a highlight video of extreme offseason workouts. Kids are dressing up like superheros and comic book characters to get an extra bit jacked up for weight lifting and practices. The kids are also big into viral videos one-upping each other with ridiculous feats of football skill. There is really no way to properly describe this, so just watch THIS VIDEO and ejoy it.

Samantha Ponder had a hilarious segment teaching College Football 101 to some children including her own little bundle of joy Scout Ponder. Without a doubt the highlight of this video is the kid from Alabama yelling “WE’RE NUMBER THREE! WE’RE NUMBER THREE!”

This brings us to this week’s edition of the SAM PONDER OUTFIT OF THE WEEK! This week she was sporting a white skirt and pink blouse, but this was hardly noticed due to the presence of QB guru George Whitfield and his purple suit and lavender rosette. The best line of this week comes courtesy of Reddit user Extra21stChromosome who asked “Why is Sam Ponder talking to Grimace?”

Now back to regularly scheduled programming. After watching the earlier extreme workout video, Rece Davis wasted no time challenging David Pollack to see if he can still do a 52 inch vertical leap. The result was impressive (at least to someone like myself with a solid 28 inch vertical leap).

https://vine.co/v/eTQEvx5q7wA/embed

A touching tribute piece to Chris Fowler followed the David Pollack acrobatics show, and it was a great look back at the last 25 years he has been on Gameday. There is nothing I love more than vintage Gameday videos. After this video, the entire Gameday crew was joined by Fowler, which finally places Fowler and Rece Davis in the same place at the same time proving them to be different.

During this segment, Rece Davis vowed to continue the famed ‘Hundred Dollar Bill Question’ popularized by Fowler. This week’s obscure piece of trivia was questioning what team in ALL of college football has the longest losing streak. Those of you playing at home obviously know it is D2 school Cheyney University of Pennsylvania with a 32 game losing streak. The hundred dollar bill remained unclaimed by the Gameday crew.

Gene W. had a great piece on Alabama kicker Adam Griffith, who is actually from Poland and has quite an amazing story. I guess Gene W. never really does stories on your average middle-class player who got a scholarship to Colorado or Pitt and lived a normal life, so I don’t need to tell you this kicker has an amazing story. From growing up in extremely hard conditions, bouncing around from parents to orphanages to the streets (and taking up smoking at the age of SIX!!!) he was adopted by an American couple and brought here to dominate the kicking game (except for his appearance in the Kick Six). On top of that, he has a pretty funny Polish-SEC accent, so check it out.

As the show neared the grand finale of game picks, out of nowhere a Brad Paisley concert broke out. He sang about college football and stuff. It was weird. I guess since he was this week’s guest picker he demanded a musical appearance. Babi Mac made a brief appearance earlier (which I still don’t understand), but the jury is still out on College Gameday musical pieces (at least to me).

Speaking of picks, this week’s grand finale featured both Brad Paisley and one of the Kirk Herbstreit clones named Chase. Brad Paisley brings a lifetime record of 6-3 picking games in his previous appearance, so we will see if he can top that. This week’s picks started off picking a few cupcakes against the spread for entertainment purposes only before diving into the day’s bigger games. As the time arrived for headgear, Corso said he had arranged a live elephant on set for today at the price of $6,000, but the elephant stood him up. He picked up the Alabama headgear and did a double fake-out before finally placing it on his head. Those of you paying close attention might have noticed he let this pick slip earlier in the show when he said he would take both “Alabama and the under”, but who cares? Its Lee freaking Corso.

Week 12 2014: College Gameday review! #cfb #saturdayselections #bamavsmissst

Posted on November 15, 2014 by gamedaycole

The afternoon games are in full swing, so its time to do this thing. Your week 12 College Gameday review has arrived. Today’s show was broadcasting live from Tuscaloosa, Alabama for the huge matchup between the undefeated Mississippi State Bulldogs and the Alabama Crimson Tide.

As of the show start time, I believe it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 26 degrees in Tuscaloosa, but that didn’t stop one brave fan from proving his toughness/insanity by showing up at least shirtless, while holding the “I’M NAKED” sign. We never saw his lower body, but this reporter will speculate that he surely had at least a pair of tidy-whities on.

Other notable signs included “Jameis Winston’s Lawyer for Heisman” and “Auburn fumbled my other sign”, but this week’s undisputed winner was the following:

While we are talking about the above screenshot, everyone will be excited to know that Herbie was back with the “KIRK HERBSTREIT LAPEL ROSETTE OF THE WEEK”. There is still a lot of speculation going on about this, and while I am sure it is nothing more than an extra little bit of flair for his suit, I assure you our crack investigation team will get to the bottom of this.

The audience at our house was incredibly excited (or not) to see the return of one Babi Mac, who was wowing the crowd in Tuscaloosa with tunes. I still don’t get how she got added to this cast of characters on Gameday, and I find it strange.

There was a duo of touching segments today featuring emotional stories from Tom Rinaldi and Gene W. The first was the tragic story of former Auburn tight end Philip Lutzenkirchen who had his life cut short at the age of 23. Philip holds the record at Auburn for the most touchdowns by a tight end, was described as an incredibly funny guy, and won the 2010 national championship before his career was ended two years later by a hip injury. Philip’s dad then took over telling the story of how he got a phone call from the police one night telling him that his son was killed in a car wreck. After further investigation, it was found that Philip and his passenger were both legally intoxicated and not wearing seat belts. Philip’s father now tours the country speaking about his son, stressing the importance of making good decisions in life as well as the point that life is a privilege; not a right. Check out the full video here: http://t.co/wykbONfGbd

The second touching story was that of Mississippi State running back Josh Robinson. Josh grew up in Bogalusa, Louisiana, and was raised by his grandmother after his father disappeared from his life and his mother was in prison. Sadly, his grandmother died of a heart attack getting ready for church one morning in 2004, leaving Robinson without his caretaker. He bounced around between relatives’ and friends’ households before eventually living out of his car behind his high school football stadium. He said it seemed easy to fall into trouble in life, but he didn’t want to be a bad kid. After being offered a scholarship by Dan Mullen, he has now become a part of the Mississippi State family, and is incredibly close with the Mullen family. He now leads the SEC in rushing touchdowns. The full video can be found here: http://goo.gl/cVaJ7e

Sam Ponder made an appearance this week to interview Nick Saban. The highlight of this was video of Nick Saban dancing with his wife at an event. It is quite surreal to see him in such a human setting. Dancing was brought up because they previously aired a segment about coaches dancing in the locker room. I would describe it in detail here, but it just can’t be properly explained with words. I urge you to watch the video which can be found here: http://goo.gl/VGRYR2

Sam Ponder’s outfit of the week can be found below. Jennifer fell in love with the boots and vest. Around our house, this is not winter or the holiday season. It is “Samantha Ponder Winter Wear” season.

Quarterback guru George Whitfield was back this week, and continues to improve on his style (no doubt thanks to this blog). This week he was wearing a reasonably matching suit and tie, as well as “those damn brown shoes” as we call them around here. The main improvement this week was a slightly bigger jacket which allowed him increased range of movement when goofing off with Tom Rinaldi and Gene W. for a segment.

When it came time for this week’s big pick segment, our special guest picker was noted Sam Houston State alumnus Marcus Luttrell. I think he also wrote a book called “Lone Survivor” and it got turned in to a movie too. David Pollack started off the Gameday site picks by going with Alabama over the Bulldogs. During the finale, Luttrell played to the crowd by picking Alabama as well. Kirk and Desmond both went with the Tide as well. Corso took over at this point, reminding us that he lost his last two Alabama headgear picks. It seemed like he was going to pull the trigger and go with Mississippi State, but he faked us out and went with Alabama to win the big game. Charley the cat picked Alabama as well, so it is 100% unanimous from the panel that Alabama will be victorious. Enjoy the rest of your football evening.