{"id":11307,"date":"2019-09-09T10:00:14","date_gmt":"2019-09-09T15:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=11307"},"modified":"2020-09-27T11:58:40","modified_gmt":"2020-09-27T16:58:40","slug":"against-all-odds-gameday-coming-to-iowa-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2019\/09\/against-all-odds-gameday-coming-to-iowa-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Against all odds, GameDay coming to Iowa State"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This started as a very different blog post.<\/p>\n<p>In all the early speculation about &#8220;College GameDay could come to Ames!&#8221; \u2014 see\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmoinesregister.com\/story\/sports\/college\/iowa-state\/randy-peterson\/2019\/08\/12\/espn-gameday-aj-epenesa-donald-trump-brock-purdy-clemson-trevor-lawerence-iowa-state-iowa-cyhawk\/1984748001\/\">here<\/a>, and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/khak.com\/espns-gameday-in-ames-it-could-happen\/\">here<\/a>, and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dearoldgold.com\/2019\/08\/24\/iowa-football-three-likely-options-espn-college-gameday\/2\/\">here<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 I was certain that there was no way it could possibly happen.<\/p>\n<p>I was wrong. It just required a massive confluence of events.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Weeks 2\/3 can be a desert in terms of college football programming, even below SEC Cupcake Week. The high-profile non-conference matchups happen early, and conference games are scattered at best. Iowa-Iowa State (no, not <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sbnation.com\/college-football\/2015\/9\/11\/9306203\/iowa-isu-rivalry-el-assico\">the name certain corners of the Internet want to give it<\/a>) is the only regular non-conference series of note in the Big Ten.<\/li>\n<li>ABC&#8217;s Saturday night game is Clemson at Syracuse, a conference game, and ESPN play-by-play announcer and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.syracuse.com\/orangefootball\/2019\/08\/sean-mcdonough-will-do-play-by-play-for-syracuse-clemson-no-it-wont-impact-gameday-odds.html\">Syracuse alumnus Sean McDonough<\/a> will be calling it. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.syracuse.com\/orangefootball\/2019\/09\/syracuses-dino-babers-after-blowout-loss-at-maryland-this-is-definitely-humble-pie.html\">But Syracuse got trucked by Maryland.<\/a>\u00a0ESPN&#8217;s night game is Florida-Kentucky (always has to be early in the year because Gators can&#8217;t stand the cold), and Kentucky hasn&#8217;t beaten Florida at home in more than 30 years.<\/li>\n<li>Another potential GameDay matchup, Stanford at UCF, would fit the &#8220;offbeat&#8221; game profile, but ESPN had already cashed its Orlando chip at Disney World for Week 0 and Stanford&#8217;s game against USC was so late that when a decision had to be made, it wasn&#8217;t known if Stanford would be a ranked team next week.<\/li>\n<li>Because this year&#8217;s schedule has an extra week and idle Week 2&#8217;s are stupid, Iowa State didn&#8217;t have any new data point after beating a I-AA team in triple overtime while Nebraska blew a 17-point halftime lead in front of a home crowd at Folsom Field. (<a href=\"https:\/\/journalstar.com\/sports\/huskers\/football\/the-scene-nu-fans-invade-folsom-field-only-to-be\/article_cb4354de-ca29-511f-980c-2b70f538ba34.html\">You read that correctly.<\/a>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The research I did is still good, but the conclusion has to be modified to take into account new data. So, rather than how &#8220;GameDay&#8221; was never coming to Ames, here&#8217;s just how unlikely it had to be.<\/p>\n<p>Of all the college football fan bases out there, Iowa State&#8217;s should be one of the most understanding of a 21st-century sports maxim: ESPN programming exists to support &#8220;the ESPN family of networks.&#8221; That also means talking about the College Football Playoff, and when not talking about the College Football Playoff, asking, &#8220;What about this team that might make the College Football Playoff?&#8221; (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.heartlandcollegesports.com\/2017\/10\/22\/sorry-iowa-state-college-gameday-was-never-coming-and-wont-be\/\">This guy gets it.<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>With the help of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncaa.com\/news\/football\/article\/college-gameday-locations-all-time-appearances-most-times-hosting\">NCAA&#8217;s list of College GameDay sites<\/a> crossed with lsufootball.net&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/lsufootball.net\/archives\/index.htm\">comprehensive TV schedule archive <\/a>(in God&#8217;s Own Time Zone, of course), I set to work compiling a spreadsheet of every GameDay site, matchup, and network in the 2010s.<\/p>\n<p>Statistics are for nine years, 2010-18.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Of 161 GameDay events, 12 were stunt GameDays with non-power-conference teams (two were actually non-games, Times Square and the NFL Draft), 33 were conference championship games or BCS\/CFP games, and five were Army-Navy. So we&#8217;re down to 111 data points.<\/li>\n<li>78 of those 111 games had a top-five team playing, and 18 more had a top-ten team playing.<\/li>\n<li>64 were on ABC or ESPN at 6 PM or later.\u00a0<del>Iowa State has never\u00a0<em>ever<\/em>\u00a0played Saturday night on ABC or ESPN in the modern television era.<\/del> ISU played Nebraska in 2006 on Saturday night on ABC to a not-quite national audience \u2014 the only such game until 2020.<\/li>\n<li>33 were non-ESPN family \u2014 but 14 of them were the CBS SEC Game of the Week and six more were LSU-Alabama CBS night games. So, really, we&#8217;re talking about 13 games ESPN had to make an extra effort for. THIRTEEN.<\/li>\n<li>GameDay went to one game where both teams were unranked: 9\/10\/11, Notre Dame at Michigan, on ESPN. Those 13 games in the above bullet point? Two of them are the Irish, and <a href=\"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2012\/09\/its-official-notre-dame-will-never-play-iowa-state\/\">Iowa State will never play Notre Dame<\/a>\u00a0(unless in a bowl).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The complete list of &#8220;College GameDay&#8221; power-conference games, 2010-present, not on the ESPN family of networks not involving a top-10 team:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>10\/12\/13, #12 Oregon beats #16 Washington, 3 PM on FS1<\/li>\n<li>9\/24\/16, #14 Tennessee beats #19 Florida, 2:30 PM on CBS<\/li>\n<li>10\/20\/18, #25 Washington State beats #12 Oregon, 6:30 PM on Fox (the culmination of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.krem.com\/article\/sports\/alum-behind-ol-crimson-reacts-to-college-gameday-coming-to-wsu\/293-604283374\">15-year campaign to get GameDay to come to Pullman<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>9\/1\/18, #12 Notre Dame beats #14 Michigan, 6:30 PM on NBC<\/li>\n<li><em>9\/14\/19, #20 Iowa at unranked Iowa State, 3 PM on FS1<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Congratulations, &#8220;College &#8216;Ames&#8217; Day.&#8221; See if Jim Walden is bringing the Washington State flag.<\/p>\n<p>CORRECTION 9\/27\/20: One game has been on ABC prime-time this century. It has been noted above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This started as a very different blog post. In all the early speculation about &#8220;College GameDay could come to Ames!&#8221; \u2014 see\u00a0here, and\u00a0here, and\u00a0here\u00a0\u2014 I was certain that there was no way it could possibly happen. I was wrong. It &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2019\/09\/against-all-odds-gameday-coming-to-iowa-state\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11307"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12398,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11307\/revisions\/12398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}