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Week 11 2014: College Gameday review #cfb #saturdayselections #getup4gameday

Posted on November 8, 2014 by gamedaycole

The picks are in; the morning games are coming to a close; the afternoon games are about to kick off; it is time for this week’s College Gameday review. Before we get started, I wanted to share for the record that the new woman shredding on the guitar in the new Gameday intro this year is Lzzy Hale from the band Halestorm. Lots of interest each week in who she is is or why she is our Gameday intro, and since I don’t think I ever addressed this issue I thought I would do that right now.

Lzzy Hale, comin' to your citaaay — Lzzy Hale, comin’ to your citaaay

Anyways. This week’s edition came to us live from East Lansing, Michigan for the biggest Big 10 matchup of the year, Michigan State vs. Ohio State. It was a chilly morning in East Lansing with the balmy weather somewhere around 37 degrees for the show. It should be noted that Desmond Howard was apparently broadcasting from somewhere in the Arctic circle this morning, or he was at least dressed for it.

37 degrees out in the wind is pretty chilly, but I’d like to compare it to what Kirk Herbstreit was wearing this morning:

One man wears a normal business suit, and another man is bundled up to explore the North pole. Was it never cold up there at Michigan when Desmond was busy winning Heismans? Anyways, another item we need to discuss is Kirk’s lapel rose this morning. This appears to be a recent trend in weeks where the Gameday crew (and SEC network crew) are sporting lapel roses. I’m not sure what to make of this, but lots of people are apparently interested, so let’s keep an eye out for Kirk’s lapel rose each week.

While we are on the topic of fashion, let’s review Gameday’s fashion version of the odd couple. Samantha Ponder was sporting a nice winter outfit this morning which Jennifer was a big fan of. She loved the jacket, loved the colors, and loved the details on the jacket. Jennifer said she loves “how sassy Samantha Ponder dresses” in the winter. She got two thumbs up from Jennifer this week. Someone who did not get two thumbs up was “Quarterback Guru to the Stars” George Whitfield. He appeared to be making progress with the matching colors this morning, but was still sporting a tiny coat with a teenie tiny lapel rose. If he was wearing “those damn brown shoes” as Jennifer calls them, at least they matched this week. Let’s keep making progress George!

We had two special feature stories this week, the first of which featured the only appearance of one Tom Rinaldi this week. It was a rehashing of a 2012 feature on Clemson wide receiver Daniel Rodriguez. Rodriguez served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and while in Afghanistan made a promise to a fellow soldier named Kevin Thompson that if he ever made it out of there alive he would play D1 college football somewhere. After a battle in which 8 soldiers were killed, including Thompson, Rodriguez was awarded a purple heart and bronze star. He returned home and put together a recruiting video with a friend and posted it to the internet. It caught the eye of Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney, who saw an incredible work ethic and desire to play, which was punctuated by the fact that Rodriguez was not asking for a scholarship; only a chance to walk on. Since then, Rodriguez has played in 37 games straight. A great quote from Daniel to top it all off: “What do you do after your dream comes true? Go and live another dream”. The segment can be found here: http://goo.gl/sH9lis

The second feature of the day was presented by Gene W. and was a piece about Arizona State running back D.J. Foster. Foster’s backstory (like most Gene W. and Rinaldi pieces) is a great story of overcoming adversity. Foster lost his 19 year old sister at the age of 15, one week before his first ever varsity high school football game. He made it a point to not give up on living his life, and on the very first play of his varsity career returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown. When it came time to pick a college, he committed to stay close to home and attend Arizona State university, where he has kept the team on the national radar ever since. The touching finale was the story of the five year anniversary of his sister’s death, when Foster and his father met on the Arizona State practice field to release a bundle of balloons with his sister’s picture attached. They did this not to mourn her loss, but to celebrate her life.

Now that the touching stories are finished, let’s get to some wacky signs we saw this week in East Lansing. Strong work this week included “IS THIS THE NICKELBACK CONCERT?”, a bunch of Urban Meyer/Oscar Meyer weiner references, “Urban Meyer doesn’t wet his toothbrush”, and “RUSH HOUR 3 WAS OK”. This week’s inappropriate winners are the following:

Urban Meyer stole Tim Tebow's virginity — Urban Meyer stole Tim Tebow’s virginity

And of course…

Nice work fellas.

When it came time to get down to the business of picking games, Desmond Howard could do nothing right for this Michigan State crowd, as I’m sure you can imagine. He did manage to get back on track with the “OFFICIAL DESMOND HOWARD MICHIGAN PICK OF THE WEEK”, picking Michigan to take down Northwestern. The counter is reset this week, so our running count of Michigan picks is back at 1.

Our special guest celebrity this week was Alice Cooper, of rock and roll music fame. He is from Michigan I guess. He was very casual and non-chalant with his picks, and didn’t get too technical with his picks. I feel like the overly technical celebrity pickers tend to underperform, while Katy Perry wins the week for some reason. Mr. Cooper of course went with Michigan State over Ohio State, to the delight of the crowd, so his casual selections may be a good sign for Sparty. Desmond and David Pollack both went with Michigan State as well, while Kirk had another no-pick since he is calling the game. Coach Corso reminisced over his first ever official headgear pick, when he put on the Brutus the Buckeye headgear back in 1996. This got the crowd fired up, but he quickly changed his tone, as he ripped off his overcoat to reveal green armor, and his assistants put on a gigantic Spartan headgear and set of fake hands for him. Charley the Cat went with Ohio State, and may be due for a win, so this should be a good matchup between the two.

Week 10 2014: College Gameday review! #saturdayselections #cfb #getup4gameday

Posted on November 1, 2014 by gamedaycole

Good afternoon football world, and welcome to your week 10 College Gameday review. This morning we had some technical difficulties this morning involving our DVR, and due to this reason we missed approximately the first 8 minutes of Gameday this morning. I would imagine that Big & Rich, along with Cowboy Troy, offered us a little zing in our zang zang while Lzzy Hale shredded on a guitar for us, but if we missed anything incredibly important please send us a letter.

The show today was broadcasting from Morgantown, West Virginia, where we would see the Big 12 matchup between #7 TCU and #20 West Virginia. I truly think Morgantown is my favorite setting, with the show setting up right at the bottom of the sorority/fraternity hill.

Early on, we were hammered with a Gene W. piece on the coaching situation down there in Florida. The viewer was treated to a montage of clips from the Will Muschamp hiring press conference, where Florida AD Jeremy Foley told us how excited he was to have Muschamp here for a long time, and Muschamp told us that he was sure Foley had made the right decision to hire himself. Fast forward to 2014, and things sure have changed. Remember when Will Muschamp was the coach-in-waiting at Texas, but had to bolt for Florida because he was too hot of a commodity to wait around another decade or two for Mack Brown to retire? I guess neither of those things panned out too well. I just hope Florida wins today against Georgia so that we can get at least one more week of the Florida coaching soap opera before Muschamp is run out of town like a common pygmy.

Carrying on with this theme of chaos at a traditional power, the Gameday boys (with Pollack replacing Corso) decided to discuss the “resignation” of Michigan AD Dave Brandon. I was impressed with how well Desmond was composed during this segment, because he normally squirms around when Michigan controversy is brought up. The main fun fact from this segment was Kirk Herbstreit saying he was the biggest Michigan fan out there (which Desmond had to quickly correct).

A highlight segment featuring TCU quarterback Trevone Boykin was followed up with a breakdown by noted quarterback guru and questionable wearer of men’s clothing, George Whitfield. This brings us to this week’s FABULOUS FASHION REVIEWS WITH @GAMEDAYJEN!!! Whitfield has scaled back his fashion statements in recent weeks, but this week Jennifer’s big takeaways were that he is still rocking the Jesse Palmer too-tight jacket, and won’t give up the damn brown shoes. He was also wearing the world’s tiniest rosette on his lapel.

We also can’t have fashion reviews without the Sam Ponder outfit of the week. This week Jennifer has declared that it is officially SAM PONDER FALL WEATHER WEAR SEASON!!! Jennifer said that she loves her boots and scarves, and that the lipstick was a nice accent this morning. As always, if Sam Ponder is reading this, your future best friend @gamedayjen is still waiting on a shoutout.

What would normally have been the strangest segment of an episode of Gameday was the Tom Rinaldi interview with Marshall quarterback Rakeem Cato; an interview which was performed from within the College Gameday bus. I guess West Virginia fans hate Rakeem Cato that much (for what reason, I am not sure) that he could not be interviewed out in the open air. Weird interview setup, but he still seems like such a good kid. In this reporter’s opinion, Marshall deserves to be ranked at least 25, and you can take that all the way to the bank.

I say that the bus interview would normally be the strangest segment of the day because this was quickly trumped by the return of the Gameday boys dressing up as coaches (complete with creepy masks) with each of them defending their representative schools. This segment basically devolves each year into too much giggling behind the masks while the props start falling apart, but for some reason I hope they continue this each year.

This bizarre fake coaching segment also leads us into this week’s best signs. There were a good selection of signs today including “Gary Patterson gives out apples on Halloween”, the return of one of the true greats known as the “SPORTS” sign, a couple of signs from the SEC network reading “KENTUCKY HAS A FOOTBALL TEAM!” and “TIM TEBOW USES CHRISTIAN MINGLE”, and the tremendous work of the young man holding the sign reading “I’m wearing adult diapers so I don’t lose my spot!”. However, this week’s two best signs were unrivaled. This week’s first entry was the following:

Our second entry this week was a sign seen very briefly, and it may be hard to make out, but it reads “TREVONE ENJOYS BOYKIN DUDES”. This is classy work good sir.

This week’s Tom Rinaldi tear jerker centered on the Auburn wide receiver Sammy Coates, and his friendship with an 11 year old fan named Kenzie Ray. Kenzie has been a fan of Auburn since she was a toddler running through the house yelling “WAR EAGLE”, but is currently in the middle of a battle with AML (a type of leukemia). She has survived hospital stays, rounds of chemo, and a bone marrow transplant, and made friends with Coates on a trip to Auburn as a guest of the Auburn drill team. Coates vowed to never take off the wristband she gave him reading “Praying for Kenzie”, and he never has. He even drove 3 hours on a particularly rough night where she may not have survived to be with her. They now share a friendship which they hope to last a lifetime as she continues her battle. Touching stuff.

Another touching segment was the honoring of Lee Corso’s 250th headgear pick today, which saw a segment highlighting his career of picking games. He sat in silence, overwhelmed by the montage, for a minute or two while the crowd chanted his name. This touching moment was broken up by Fowler’s comedic relief, noting that “the crowd here in Morgantown loves you… at least for the moment”. See the following for more details: http://goo.gl/wOYlmi

Bald Man on Campus featuring Scott Van Pelt was back this week, and he was hanging in an overly casual manner with WVU head coach Dana Holgorsen. The segment mostly centered around Holgorsen’s unique hair style, and much was made of comparisons to McCracken from the movie Kingpin.

Other quick notes include Desmond Howard revealing he is a Taurus, and Auburn DB claiming that they call the SEC West “the baby NFL” (which is an absurd claim). Another interesting note is that I’m not sure the phrase “Florida State” was said once during the entire show. No coverage of the exciting Thursday night finish against Louisville, no mention of Jameis Winston and his shenanigans, and no mention of Karlos Williams and his own recent controversy. Just interesting in my opinion. Also, David Pollack apparently sat around playing Mario Kart against WVU students yesterday. For fans of the now-defunct feature known as “DAVID POLLACK USING THE INTERNET”, we now bring you what will hopefully continue on into the future: “DAVID POLLACK PLAYING N64!”

When it came time to get down to the real business of picking the games, this week’s special guest celebrity was revealed to be none other than West Virginia native Braid Paisley. He seemed really knowledgeable about college football, even revealing that his first WVU game was as a kid watching Lee Corso’s Indiana team come into Morgantown to play in their “crappy little stadium” at the time. As the picks continued, the crew got to the random matchup of Pitt-Duke, to which Brad Paisley said he CERTAINLY WAS NOT GOING TO SUGGEST THE CROWD START A CHANT REGARDING PITT. The crowd immediately broke out into an “EAT SHIT PITT” chant, which was very quickly talked over by the rest of the crew so as to not offend women, young children, and the FCC. When it came time to pick the big game of the day, David Pollack had previously picked WVU. Desmond upset the home crowd by going with TCU, while Paisley picked WVU to nobody’s surprise. Kirk gave us generic keys to the game since he is calling the game as we speak. Corso talked up the West Virginia crowd big time and got them into a complete frenzy before apologizing to Brad, the WVU fans, and John Denver, while popping on the TCU Hornfrog headgear….backwards! Charley the Cat and Jennifer both went with WVU as well, this could end up being a close one. Enjoy the rest of your football day!

Corso with the backwards TCU headgear! Photo courtesy of Gameday Twitter

Update: Today’s “Desmond Howard Michigan Pick of the Week” saw a dejected and depressed Desmond Howard pick Indiana to beat his Michigan Wolverines. Wait, what? You read that right; Indiana over Michigan. THIS IS NOT A DRILL! SOMEONE ALERT MICHIGAN INTERIM ATHLETIC DIRECTOR JIM HACKETT! This marks the first Desmond Howard pick against Michigan since week 11/27/2010, when he picked Ohio State to beat Michigan in week 13. Remember this day os that someday you can tell your grandchildren about the last time Desmond picked against Michigan.

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?