Bando Calrissian

October 8th, 2018 at 12:16 AM ^

Nope, they went to Florida-Florida State. They'd already done two M games, the Colorado opener and MSU in East Lansing. Weirdly, they ended up at four UF games that year.

Going through the list of locations, I completely forgot that campus Gamedays weren't a weekly occurrence until the early 2000s. There we stretches in the mid-90s with three weeks in between travel shows.

M-Dog

October 8th, 2018 at 9:20 PM ^

No College Game Day, but they did have Beno Cook go to Penn State for Judgement Day.  He had a broadcast desk there and they would do live cut-ins.

We Michigan fans gave him hell after the game during one of the live cut-ins.  He told us all that he would vote us #1 to calm us down. 

It worked . . . we yelled out sarcastically "We love you, Beno" during the next cut-in.

 

 

NittanyFan

October 7th, 2018 at 4:28 PM ^

This very likely does mean GameDay won't be in town for PSU @ Michigan on 3-November, however.  They usually don't do repeat visits in a year.

I also see this as a sign that ABC is planning on Notre Dame @ Northwestern as their prime-time game on 3-November.  They may even put GameDay there (if not Alabama @ LSU).  If ABC does put ND in Prime-Time, that probably means PSU @ Michigan will be during the day on FOX.

A bit of speculation there, but reading some tea-leaves.

Leaders And Best

October 7th, 2018 at 5:16 PM ^

I don't think that is how it works. I thought FOX now has the first choice for games during the season with the new TV contract for first-tier rights. And I don't believe there is anything in the contract that prevents both games being at night on different networks. It may not be at night, but I don't believe it will be for any of the reasons you listed. I think the bigger hurdle may be how the Big Ten handles November conference games. I think any night game time in November that is not set before the season has to be agreed to by all parties (network, conference, and the institutions), but the process is still pretty opaque. The new TV contracts have ceded some of the control the institutions had on night games, especially in November, as the new contracts have more night games written into them than in the past. The Big Ten has now gone from having to provide 9 night games per season in the old contract to having to provide 19-21 night games per season in the new contracts.

EDIT: I missed that ABC/ESPN used one of their picks on Notre Dame-Northwestern before the season so that is set, but the game time was not set before the season which takes some of the control away from the network. I think you are right that FOX will exercise their pick on PSU-Michigan, but it is still possible one, both or neither are at night.

ijohnb

October 7th, 2018 at 7:02 PM ^

I think he genuinely doesn’t like that stuff.  It is the athletic coach version of “small talk” and it is clear he is not that kind of person.  I don’t think Harbaugh intends to be awkward, or make other people uncomfortable in those situations, I think he is just really really uncomfortable himself.

karpodiem

October 7th, 2018 at 9:21 PM ^

Harbaugh is very comfortable in his own skin, and extremely intelligent. It's just that he has to talk in platitudes and generalities with every single person he interacts with that isn't a part of the program. That gets annoying/boring after awhile, especially since everyone who is a fan of the program probably wants to talk to him about things he can't talk about. 

It really isolates you from the rest of the population, but there's a few million reasons why I think he's ok with it. It's just part of life/what happens when you get really good at what you do.

Bando Calrissian

October 8th, 2018 at 12:22 AM ^

It's funny, though, how every single other coach can speak in complete sentences and non-cliches, and Harbaugh trips over basic questions, as he did this week with "what does Homecoming mean to you?"

The guy is an alum. He's not going to give away a scheme secret by talking about how great it is for the university community to come home and celebrate their alma mater, maybe talk for a little bit about how much it meant for him to come back to a place that meant a lot to him. Instead, he produced some weird, disjointed two-sentence word vomit that boiled down to "there's no better words in the English language than coming and home."

I don't know. This guy's a great football coach, but he's a massive enigma when it comes to the very important public relations aspects of his job. If you're getting paid as much as he is to be an ambassador of the university, you should be able to express himself, well, a lot better than he does.