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Kirk Herbstreit: What makes a great guest picker on College GameDay

275133747_4796292347117549_592518599057046758_nby:Jonathan Wagner•09/18/21•

Jonathan Wagner

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Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images.

ESPN College GameDay has been a staple in pregame routines of college football fans across the country since 1987. The pre-game broadcast is held week to week on site of one of the weekend’s feature games. Current hosts of the broadcast are Lee Corso, Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard, and Rece Davis, but each week College GameDay has a celebrity guest picker. Herbstreit talked earlier in the week about what it takes to be a good guest picker on the GameDay set.

Herbstreit: We’re just out here having fun

To be a good guest on the College GameDay set, Herbstreit thinks that the only quality you need is to come out and try to have fun. He said that the people who come out and try to over-analyze things and think too much aren’t as good as the people who come out and have fun with it.

“I think the entertainers, like the people who get it,” Herbstreit said when asked about what makes a good guest picker on The Players Club Podcast during the week. “We had Ashton Kutcher on last week, and the was just something about, you know, they just have a real like ‘Oh man, I don’t know!’ They’re not trying to break it down. They’re just having fun with it. Ashton Kutcher did a good job of that. The musicians come on, they’re really nervous.

“That’s the thing you forget, we’re just out here having fun. But you walk on that set, you get around all those people, and I think they feel like they need to know what they’re talking about. We don’t want that. We want them to have ‘Oh, man, I sang a song when my first concert was in Kansas, I’m going with Kansas State.’ The guy who gets it of course is Charles Barkley — he’s phenomenal. Bill Murray was at Clemson one time, he was funny. It’s just the guys that kind of roll with it and have fun are the guys who usually do the best.”

Previous guest pickers on College GameDay

Six people have been a guest picker three times on the College GameDay set. Charles Barkley leads the way with six appearances, the last coming in December of 2019. Kenny Chesney, Eric Church, Eddie George, Keegan-Michael Key, and Roger Staubach have each made three appearances.

To no surprise, Alabama and Ohio State lead the way with 50 appearances on GameDay. Ohio State, though, leads all schools by hosting the broadcast 19 times.

Saturday’s College GameDay set will be held in Happy Valley ahead of the highly anticipated Auburn–Penn State matchup. The last time College GameDay came to Happy Valley was pretty memorable.