Rece Davis and the rest of ESPN’s College GameDay crew are ready to set up shop at 9 a.m. Saturday on Old Main Lawn ahead of Penn State’s primetime White Out matchup against Auburn.
Davis, GameDay’s host, will be alongside Kirk Herbstreit, Lee Corso, and the rest of the gang when the show kicks off tomorrow. And like many others, he is amped up for what the White Out has to offer.
“This is one of the great atmospheres in college football,” Davis said on Friday afternoon. “I love going places where the sport is important, but they have rich tradition where fans are part of the game. And there’s very few atmospheres that are as haunting as the White Out and Beaver Stadium.”
Being an SEC team, Auburn is of course no secret to loud, chaotic atmospheres. Considering the Tigers often play the likes of LSU and Alabama, you could even say they’re as prepared as a team could possibly be entering White Out conditions. Davis, though, still believes Auburn is in for a “different” experience.
“Auburn’s been into places before that are tough,” Davis said. “I’m not going to sit here and try to tell you that this will be the toughest environment ever faced by anyone in an Auburn uniform. But, it will be different, it’ll be — Kirk [Herbstreit] has used the word choreographed. I think with Zombie Nation, when they play that, it feels like the stadium’s going to collapse.”
Before GameDay announced it was coming to State College for the White Out, there was a debate as to where the crew would go this week. Down south in Gainesville, No. 1 Alabama is playing No. 11 Florida in a highly anticipated matchup. While there may have been some external debate from fans, Davis explained that it really wasn’t much of a question for the crew.
“I think all of us wanted to come here,” Davis said. “I don’t think it took really any campaigning. The game of the day, as important as this game is, is in Gainesville — in terms of the highest-ranked teams. It doesn’t mean it’s the best game; it doesn’t mean it’s the best scene; it doesn’t mean it’s the best for the show. It doesn’t mean that at the end of Saturday that that will be the most important game.”
“This, to me, was the most compelling scene,” he continued. “It’s an unusual matchup in the regular season. You’ve got the White Out. I mean this is a year where we’re celebrating the return of the fans, right? So why wouldn’t you come to the White Out game? To me, it was a pretty easy decision… To me, this is the place to be on this college football Saturday to celebrate the sport as a whole.”
Davis then talked about the importance of having fans back and the energy they provide. While he was proud of the work the GameDay crew did last year without fans, he said “the soundtrack was missing,” and the pumped in noise during games just wasn’t the same. It will of course be a different story when GameDay goes live on Saturday morning.
As far as what Davis is most looking forward to on Saturday, that would be the very start of the day. Oh, and also getting a Grilled Sticky and Monkey Business from the Creamery.
“Scene set to start the show tomorrow morning,” Davis said. “Having all of the fans out here in white, being revved up and ready to go for an unusual game. By that, I mean that this White Out weekend is typically reserved for Michigan or Ohio State. To have Auburn come in for it is kind of cool, so I think just starting the day with that is going to be awesome… and the Monkey Business at the Creamery.”
