Penn State Football: Equipment Czar Spider Caldwell Featured on ESPN’s College GameDay

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Set your alarm clock, DVR and TiVo – Spider Caldwell is on ESPN’s College GameDay Saturday morning at 9:48 a.m.

That admonition includes Caldwell as well.

Penn State football’s equipment and facilities coordinator will be too busy to watch, so he’ll have to catch the segment on Sunday, when he’s back in town.

That’s because on Saturday he’ll be in MetLife Stadium, readying the Nittany Lions for their season-opening game against Syracuse.

Brad Caldwell, known as Spider almost from the day he started as a student manager for Penn State football 31 seasons ago, was a big star in ESPN’s “All Access: Penn State Training Days” that ran all over the cable network earlier this month.

“They sure didn’t have to shoot anything new. They shoot enough film when they were at our place for 10 days,” Spider said Friday afternoon while at MetLife, as he directed his crew of a dozen-plus assistants and student managers in their preparation for Bill O’Brien and his team’s arrival at 5:40 p.m. for a stadium visit.

“They spent four hours at my house, with my wife Karen and I. They got her sewing the uniforms,” Caldwell said. “They also miked me for a entire day and followed me around. I can’t imagine there being that much that’s interesting about me.”

Caldwell was just self-effacing Spider being Spider. Here’s why: ESPN knows a great story when it sees one.

In the “Training Days” series, Caldwell wore a goofy leather football helmet and affected a Heisman pose. He shared his heartfelt memories of Joe Paterno. He shared his genuine and genuinely funny interactions with the Penn State players. And he revealed the scores of hours Karen put into adding names to the Penn State jerseys in 2012.

In short, the diminutive Caldwell became an Internet sensation, on YouTube and with some great GIFs. All feel-good stuff. So, on Saturday, the network will share a special, never-seen-before segment on Caldwell. And it will be on ESPN’s biggest stage for college football.

Beginning with Saturday’s inaugural show of the 2013 season, College GameDay will expand to three hours on ESPN. And the segment on Caldwell – who began his Penn State career as a student manager in 1983 – will be featured 48 minutes into the program. ESPN’s Gene Wojciechowski, who served as the on-air voice and on-site host of the “Training Day” series, is the point person for the Spider special.

“People have told me that they liked what was shown in the programs,” Caldwell said. “There can’t be anything good that is left.”