College Gameday

[Phillycat]

At the beginning of the season, ESPN had announced that the format for college gameday was changing to the same as football where instead of having pre-determined sites, the show would travel to the best game of the weekend. It only turned out half true. ESPN is determining the location weekly but unlike football, they are only traveling to sites that have games on ESPN (pretty expected but disappointing nonetheless). Gameday in 2011 at Villanova was an awesome experience and it's a shame Big East schools won't get to have that moving forward. That being said, the current cast is a clown show and has lost a lot of its entertainment value with the departures of Digger and Huhbert Davis. I'd love to see fox get to 3-5 Big East and PAC-12 campuses a year and create a show to rival gameday. Gus, Bill, Croshere, any of the other studio guys they have and Erin Andrews would be a fantastic crew for it. Thoughts?

[R Jay]

At the beginning of the season, ESPN had announced that the format for college gameday was changing to the same as football where instead of having pre-determined sites, the show would travel to the best game of the weekend. It only turned out half true. ESPN is determining the location weekly but unlike football, they are only traveling to sites that have games on ESPN (pretty expected but disappointing nonetheless). Gameday in 2011 at Villanova was an awesome experience and it's a shame Big East schools won't get to have that moving forward. That being said, the current cast is a clown show and has lost a lot of its entertainment value with the departures of Digger and Huhbert Davis. I'd love to see fox get to 3-5 Big East and PAC-12 campuses a year and create a show to rival gameday. Gus, Bill, Croshere, any of the other studio guys they have and Erin Andrews would be a fantastic crew for it. Thoughts?

I'd agree. I've loved both versions Gameday for years and feel that it would be a great investment for Fox.
The major issue is of course ratings. I believe last year they had something like Gameday for football, but it did awful ratings-wise and it didn't return this year. Of course, a lot of FS1 programming was bad in terms of ratings since it was the networks first year, so there's no reason why they couldn't bring it back and generate better ratings.
If Fox agrees to a deal with the Big Ten that would give them a lot more in terms of properties to use for both football and basketball - they'd have Big Ten, Big 12, and PAC-12 for football and Big Ten, PAC-12, and Big East for basketball.

[stever20]

At the beginning of the season, ESPN had announced that the format for college gameday was changing to the same as football where instead of having pre-determined sites, the show would travel to the best game of the weekend. It only turned out half true. ESPN is determining the location weekly but unlike football, they are only traveling to sites that have games on ESPN (pretty expected but disappointing nonetheless). Gameday in 2011 at Villanova was an awesome experience and it's a shame Big East schools won't get to have that moving forward. That being said, the current cast is a clown show and has lost a lot of its entertainment value with the departures of Digger and Huhbert Davis. I'd love to see fox get to 3-5 Big East and PAC-12 campuses a year and create a show to rival gameday. Gus, Bill, Croshere, any of the other studio guys they have and Erin Andrews would be a fantastic crew for it. Thoughts?

Part of things this year has been that we haven't had a ton of great matchups on Saturday's.
look the 4 weeks-
Jan 17- they went Kansas @ Iowa St-
our schedule-
Marquette 58 at Xavier 62 - Cincinnati, OH
Butler 59 at Georgetown 61 - Washington, DC
Villanova 62 at Pennsylvania 47 - Philadelphia, PA
Providence 74 at Creighton 65 - Omaha, NE

Jan 24- they went Wisconsin @ Michigan
our schedule-
DePaul 76 at Xavier 89 - Cincinnati, OH
Georgetown 95 at Marquette 85 - Milwaukee, WI
(note, if Duke/St John's had been Saturday, think it's a lock that would have gotten it with Coach K's 1000th win possible)

Jan 31- they went Duke @ Virginia
our schedule-
Xavier 82 at Seton Hall 90 - Newark, NJ
Providence 66 at Saint John`s 75 - New York, NY
Georgetown 67 at Creighton 40 - Omaha, NE
Villanova 68 at DePaul 55 - Rosemont, IL
Butler 72 at Marquette 68 - Milwaukee, WI

Feb 7- they are going Kentucky @ Florida(what most think could be Kentucky's toughest game of the year)
our schedule-
Marquette at Seton Hall 12:00
Creighton at Saint John`s 12:00
Providence at Xavier 1:00
Georgetown at Villanova 2:00
DePaul at Butler 3:30

Feb 14-
our schedule-
Seton Hall at Providence 4:00
Marquette at Creighton 1:00
Saint John`s at Xavier 3:00
Villanova at Butler 6:00
think real good shot that Nova/Butler could get it....

Feb 21-
our schedule-
Xavier at Butler 2:00
Villanova at Marquette 2:00
Seton Hall at Saint John`s 2:30
DePaul at Georgetown 8:00

Feb 28-
our schedule
Butler at DePaul 2:00
Creighton at Seton Hall 4:00
Georgetown at Saint John`s 12:00
Villanova at Xavier 2:00

Mar 7-
our schedule-
Seton Hall at Georgetown 12:00
Butler at Providence 12:00
Saint John`s at Villanova 12:00
Xavier at Creighton 2:00
DePaul at Marquette 2:00

really our Saturday schedule has been underwhelming when you look at it.

[R Jay]

ESPN won't be bringing Gameday to any Big East games this year, or in the future, likely. Since its inception, Gameday has only been to games that were either slated for Saturday Primetime, on ESPN at a different time, or not on television whatsoever. Unlike football Gameday, basketball Gameday has never gone to a game that was being broadcast by a rival network (by comparison football Gameday has broadcast live from a CBS SEC game countless times). Only if they change this philosophy (unlikely) or we see a rival Fox product produced (unlikely right now, but possible in the future, particularly if Fox acquires rights to Big Ten games) will we see Gameday or something similar coming to Big East games.
As for the lack of high quality games on Saturdays (which has nothing to do with why Gameday hasn't visited a Big East game), it's likely due to travel considerations. The Big East has tried to send teams to closer venues (Creighton to Marquette, DePaul to Creighton, Butler to Marquette, etc.) on weeknights as much as possible to minimize impacts on athletes (particularly missing classes). That means that on the weekends the "west teams" are visiting the "east teams" or vice versa as much as possible. It is quite obvious that there is an imbalance in terms of east-west strength this year. The five teams in the east are all in the hunt for the NCAA tournament, while only two of the five in the west are in the hunt. That means that we could see two or three clunkers (or more accurately, perceived clunkers) on the weekends, while the weeknight matchups are a lot more attractive.

[stever20]

ESPN won't be bringing Gameday to any Big East games this year, or in the future, likely. Since its inception, Gameday has only been to games that were either slated for Saturday Primetime, on ESPN at a different time, or not on television whatsoever. Unlike football Gameday, basketball Gameday has never gone to a game that was being broadcast by a rival network (by comparison football Gameday has broadcast live from a CBS SEC game countless times). Only if they change this philosophy (unlikely) or we see a rival Fox product produced (unlikely right now, but possible in the future, particularly if Fox acquires rights to Big Ten games) will we see Gameday or something similar coming to Big East games.
As for the lack of high quality games on Saturdays (which has nothing to do with why Gameday hasn't visited a Big East game), it's likely due to travel considerations. The Big East has tried to send teams to closer venues (Creighton to Marquette, DePaul to Creighton, Butler to Marquette, etc.) on weeknights as much as possible to minimize impacts on athletes (particularly missing classes). That means that on the weekends the "west teams" are visiting the "east teams" or vice versa as much as possible. It is quite obvious that there is an imbalance in terms of east-west strength this year. The five teams in the east are all in the hunt for the NCAA tournament, while only two of the five in the west are in the hunt. That means that we could see two or three clunkers (or more accurately, perceived clunkers) on the weekends, while the weeknight matchups are a lot more attractive.

If they said they were changing it this year, you have to take that at face value. The fact is nothing outside of this weekend would have remotely been considered so far. I think the big litmus test for this is next weekend. Nova/Butler is one of only 2 games with top 25 teams next Saturday(Baylor/Kansas on CBS is the other). The only other seemingly possible game is UConn/SMU.

[R Jay]

ESPN won't be bringing Gameday to any Big East games this year, or in the future, likely. Since its inception, Gameday has only been to games that were either slated for Saturday Primetime, on ESPN at a different time, or not on television whatsoever. Unlike football Gameday, basketball Gameday has never gone to a game that was being broadcast by a rival network (by comparison football Gameday has broadcast live from a CBS SEC game countless times). Only if they change this philosophy (unlikely) or we see a rival Fox product produced (unlikely right now, but possible in the future, particularly if Fox acquires rights to Big Ten games) will we see Gameday or something similar coming to Big East games.
As for the lack of high quality games on Saturdays (which has nothing to do with why Gameday hasn't visited a Big East game), it's likely due to travel considerations. The Big East has tried to send teams to closer venues (Creighton to Marquette, DePaul to Creighton, Butler to Marquette, etc.) on weeknights as much as possible to minimize impacts on athletes (particularly missing classes). That means that on the weekends the "west teams" are visiting the "east teams" or vice versa as much as possible. It is quite obvious that there is an imbalance in terms of east-west strength this year. The five teams in the east are all in the hunt for the NCAA tournament, while only two of the five in the west are in the hunt. That means that we could see two or three clunkers (or more accurately, perceived clunkers) on the weekends, while the weeknight matchups are a lot more attractive.

If they said they were changing it this year, you have to take that at face value. The fact is nothing outside of this weekend would have remotely been considered so far. I think the big litmus test for this is next weekend. Nova/Butler is one of only 2 games with top 25 teams next Saturday(Baylor/Kansas on CBS is the other). The only other seemingly possible game is UConn/SMU.

Again, they haven't gone anywhere that has been on a rival network yet. Until I see otherwise, I don't expect them to change this. I also just checked their advanced schedule, UCONN/SMU is scheduled as their Saturday Primetime game, led into by College Gameday, thus I would be very surprised if they go elsewhere.

[TheBall]

I will take the fox national games over the espn college game days every time. But I agree that it would be cool if they did something special on campus for a "gameday" where they ran their regular games on FS1.

[robinreed]

Why should ESPN make Game day for any teams who are not broadcast on ESPN? Why advertise for or promote your competition? I believe Disney still owns ESPN and I am sure they would not advertise for their competition. Would GM start selling Ford products or advertise for them? Would Procter & Gamble advertise for or promote Unilever or Johnson & Johnson? Would Kroger advertise for Food Lion, Meijers or Aldi?

Perhaps eventually Fox will clone the Game day experience but it will not happen soon. If you look at this for what it is namely a promotion you can not expect ESPN to do this for anyone they do not control.

[stever20]

Why should ESPN make Game day for any teams who are not broadcast on ESPN? Why advertise for or promote your competition? I believe Disney still owns ESPN and I am sure they would not advertise for their competition. Would GM start selling Ford products or advertise for them? Would Procter & Gamble advertise for or promote Unilever or Johnson & Johnson? Would Kroger advertise for Food Lion, Meijers or Aldi?

Perhaps eventually Fox will clone the Game day experience but it will not happen soon. If you look at this for what it is namely a promotion you can not expect ESPN to do this for anyone they do not control.

If Game Day becomes a bigger show, than yes it could happen. I mean, look at them at football. They've done game day's before CBS games- and yes, even Fox games.

[butlerguy03]

If Game Day becomes a bigger show, than yes it could happen. I mean, look at them at football. They've done game day's before CBS games- and yes, even Fox games.

Yep, but they also have a HUGE interest in the SEC with the SEC Network and before that, special broadcast deals. If the Big East was still on ESPN Monday's, then they may come for next Saturday's game. But we are not, and they shouldn't. Doesn't make any business sense.