LSU duo Livvy Dunne, Paul Skenes to be Week 11 ESPN College GameDay celebrity guest pickers

An LSU power couple will be on hand this weekend with ESPN’s College GameDay, star gymnast Livvy Dunne and former ace pitcher Paul Skenes will join the show as guest pickers in Baton Rouge, sources tell On3’s Pete Nakos. It’s the first pair of guest pickers of 2024.

And the duo will surely be warmly received by the Tiger faithful. Skenes was the centerpiece of the 2023 LSU baseball team that won the College World Series as he dominated as a starting pitcher and has since gone on dominate with the Pittsburgh Pirates in Major League Baseball.

Dunne, of course, has been an early star of the NIL era, gaining notoriety as a social media sensation before even arriving on campus. She served as a key rotational piece on the LSU gymnastics team that won a national title last year, and is back for another season in 2024-25.

NEWS: Livvy Dunne & Paul Skenes will be the College GameDay guest pickers for Alabama at LSU this weekend, @PeteNakos_ has learned🐯https://t.co/CT71qEhmeM pic.twitter.com/yrY3eZ8Gco

— On3 (@On3sports) November 7, 2024

LSU faces Alabama in a pivotal SEC matchup in Baton Rouge on Saturday night, drawing GameDay and plenty of attention nationwide.

Saturday’s matchup will also likely serve as an elimination game in the College Football Playoff race, as GameDay host and ESPN talking head Rece Davis said on the ESPN College GameDay podcast this week.

Amidst a separate discussion about the playoff format, he used it as an example of what’s at play for programs like these in these late-season meetings as, regardless of the outcome, he has the loser not making the field for the College Football Playoff.

“The point that you made about random games having playoff implications? Not random games but more games than one would anticipate – sort of in the NFL style in this team would be eliminated from Wild Card consideration. I think, in a de facto sense, we already have that,” Davis argued. “We have that this weekend. I mean, Alabama and LSU is exactly that.”

“It’s, I mean – LSU, I guess, in theory, would still be alive with some wild chaos and tiebreakers with only two conference losses, if they were to lose, for the SEC Championship. But Alabama is definitely going to be cooked and LSU is going to be cooked if it loses for an at-large,” stated Davis.

Both teams come into the game with an overall record of 6-2. That, as Davis noted, is worse for Alabama considering each of theirs are from during the course of conference play.

Alabama lost both of their games last month at Vanderbilt and at Tennessee. That already has them all but out of contention for the SEC Championship but still within reach of the College Football Playoff after getting the final at-large berth during the release of the initial rankings earlier this week.

LSU is then coming off of their first loss in league play at Texas A&M. That outcome has them just outside of the field but with a little more of a margin with a better chance that they’d be able to play for the conference title in Atlanta.