National Numbnuts Review

College Gameday is a fantastic television show. No other sport has a preview show that is as much a part of the experience of the sport itself. And no other preview show is as good either. The hosts and pundits are, as much as anyone else, the face of college football (interesting considering the relative...err... success of the pundits). Their in depth stories are typically excellent. Their road trips actually drive up excitement for the sport (and if you ever saw CBS's The NFL Today on the road, you know how good a job Gameday does). The show is actually pretty great. Unfortunately it's so good that no other network can muster a college preview show that can compete with College Gameday. It is absolute hegemony.

And of course, that isn't good. The fact that there are no real competitors to Gameday results in the show being basically Pravda for the college football world. Halftime comments from Aaron Taylor and Craig James just can't hold a candle to the 90 minutes Kirk and Lee have to pontificate. Gameday sets the agenda for the college football world, more than any of the dot coms, more than the weekly magazines, more than local papers, more than talk radio.

And more than just setting the agenda, the characters on Gameday affect the game itself. By promoting some teams more than others. By proffering opinions of which teams would beat others, which teams are the best, which players are "the best in all of college football", the talking heads on Gameday do in fact provide a resource for the sheeplike human beings who serve as pollsters, who in turn decide the champion. Let there be no mistaking what is happening here: the producers, reporters and talking heads on Gameday actually directly affect the game itself. I can think of no other comparable in sports, or really in any other field. I guess there are some people who think the political punditocracy affects elections, but there are plenty of outlets providing political opinions (might've been different when network news was about the sole source, but today the sheer number of outlets blend all noise together).

In college football, if a game isn't covered on Gameday, it may as well not have been played. If Corso and Herbstreit talk about how great a team is for a month straight, you can track that team's rise in the polls. When they talk about how overrated a team is and pick against it week after week, surprisingly enough, that team's poll numbers stay flat (even if they win) or drop precipitously with a loss.

So that's why someone needs to hold them accountable. And nobody asked me, but I'll be glad to do it. I've been tracking the comments made for the first month of the season (here, here, here, here and here), and you can see the shifting positions and the promoted teams. Below are a few examples and comments from the last month:

• The preview and first two weeks included some pretty clear promoting by Corso and Herbstreit for Ohio State. Partly, I'd figure because they knew they'd be there for the second week and it's really self-promotion. Naturally, Herbstreit's tie to the program is somewhat questionable, but let hornfans.com worry about that. The Herbstreit kids on the laps might be a nice family picture, but in terms of reporting, I think it was a little too far.
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• Losing Trev Alberts after the first weekend hurts the overall coverage. Alberts always had a loud opinion, which makes for good TV, and he occasionally took sides that weren't necessarily the prevailing or easy call (sometimes due to stupidity, sometimes not). His leaving appears to have left ESPN programming in a sort of limbo. It looked pretty clear after the preview show and the first week that there was going to be more involvement by the studio guys on Gameday, partly for cross-promotion and partly because the studio guys made the show better. Holtz, while a ridiculous personality for college football, just doesn't have the pundit personality. He doesn't fill the void left by Trev. And I think ESPN knows it too. It wouldn't surprise me to see someone else replace Holtz before the end of the season (they know they aren't grooming Granny to fill the seat for next year). But Mark May has to be pissed off the most. He's like a wrestler who's pretty good, but needs to be a part of a tag team for a while to get over. Trev was a good tag team partner for May, and without him, he just doesn't have the power or gravity.
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• Notre Dame got more coverage than merited at the beginning, but once they won their first two games, it'll be impossible for them not to get favorable coverage the rest of the year. At first it was a big story because they weren't any good (May and Corso), now it's a big story because they are good (same). Of course, May originally talked trash about the Irish because they were playing Pitt. While Corso's turnaround is way more stark. He's basically completely reversed his predictions before. And subtle digs from Fowler and Herbstreit might be fun to watch for those looking for it (Irish fans), but the casual viewer might miss it. Corso and May were dead wrong about Notre Dame. And now they've just changed their mind.
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• The new members of the program - Howard and Lachey. Obviously Lachey's presence hasn't worked out all that well, since he's disappeared the last two weeks. His stories belonged on ESPN Hollywood, which nobody watches. He definitely is a fan though, and I envy him for the gig. But losing him won't hurt the show. They'll just get West Coast Sally to do stories about Matt Leinhart ballroom dancing instead. Desmond Howard is a lot better, though he's an apple to Lachey's orange. Howard is instead a significant significant significant improvement over Rocket Ismail. A bit of a sycophant, and still a little bit afraid to take an unpopular position, Howard still has some promise. Not a threat to take any of the other chairs, but he's not a drag on the program.
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• Herbstreit is the slickest pundit, because he actually makes tons of pronouncements, never gets called on it when they're too brash or incorrect, and for some reason after listening to him qualify about half of his pronouncements (with "might be" or "if this happens") you gloss over how he's made all these overreaching statements. He's prone to the "bestinallofcollegefootball" statement, which by the end of the year just about every single scholarship athlete at every D-1A program will be the bestinallofcollegefootball in some category. His pronouncements are turning out to have the importance of participation trophies in little league.
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• There is a kind of problem on the show of the pundits ganging up on someone with a somewhat unpopular take. The perfect example is Corso thinking USC's success will hurt them and they'll beat themselves. While I'm the first to say the pundits should be held accountable for the things they say, Corso hasn't picked against them so far. His USC line is a yearlong prediction, which can still prove accurate. Every game USC wins, the next week Fowler and Herbstreit crack jokes at Corso's expense on USC, and to an extent he lets them. Corso hasn't been proved wrong so far, but Herbstreit especially acts as if he has. Meanwhile, Herbstreit has on a few occasions acted pretty defensive when called on a wrong prediction (usually relying on his "mights" and "ifs"). Let's face facts: both Corso and Herbstreit are already wrong about their national title winner (I'd give 100-1 odds OSU wins the BCS, 50-1 they're even in the game). Everyone on the show has been wrong about something at sometime or another. It's odd that the USC take seems to get such a response from the others, especially since it isn't wrong so far.
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• It seems pretty clear that they're trying harder to go to newer locations for the road trips, since Pittsburgh and Boston aren't places they frequent, especially whem they could've gone to Gainesville and Tallahassee those weekends. I've got no problem with that. I like that they show that there are fans in traditional "pro" towns too.
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• I've been sick of the new theme song since about the first half hour of the first show. It's annoying.
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• Just my impression:
  Promoted maybe too much teams: Ohio State, USC, Florida, Notre Dame, Oklahoma (they kept believing, but then dropped them entirely), Iowa, Washington, Pittsburgh, Boston College, Bowling Green.
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  Promoted not enough teams: Michigan State, Arizona State, Alabama, Minnesota, West Virginia, Iowa State, Conference USA (other than Tulane), Vanderbilt, West Virginia, Toledo.
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• Things to look for over the next month:
  1) Penn State overpromoted (upcoming ABC prime time game...)
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  2) Whether they promote or downplay the Heisman Race, and how they frame the race.
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  3) How particular one-loss teams are viewed the week after their loss. This is actually one of the areas where the show's influence can really be seen. When some teams lose one game, they are pretty much treated as dead in the water (like, Texas A&M for example). Other teams are given the "they're still a great team/they played a good opponent/just had an off night/I'd still take them against most teams" treatment (like Ohio State). Teams that get the former treatment face an incredible uphill battle in trying to stay alive in the race for a BCS slot. Teams that get the latter treatment pretty much have the wind at their backs. As more teams get losses, this disparate treatment really will show.
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  4) Whether any mid-majors get any coverage at all. Last year it seemed that mid-major respect was an editorial choice. This year they haven't covered the smaller conferences much at all, aside from Hurricane Katrina coverage. This is likely because some of the best mid-major programs have losses early (Boise State, Bowling Green, Fresno State, TCU), but there are other mid-majors with pretty good seasons so far (Toledo, UTEP). In the past they have had in-depth stories on players at smaller schools too, but not this year.
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  5) Whether Nick Lachey comes back. If they use the fake field to do walkthrough plays. If Lou Holtz has that seat all year. If Kirk finally admits that Ohio State isn't that good when they lose 3 games. If Corso keeps preemptively using the NSFMF. If Corso decides not to care anymore about decorum and just start explicitly discussing lines and gambling patterns (he'd get more fans if he did).
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• Possible upcoming locations:
  10/1: Morgantown (not likely VT 2 in a row), East Lansing, Tempe (my bet), Tuscaloosa, W. Lafayette, Lincoln (probably not, but could decide Big XII North), Happy Valley.
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  10/8: Nashville (I'd love it), Knoxville, Happy Valley, LA (Pasadena), Dallas (probably), Annapolis (they go to a Service Academy every few years).
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  10/15: Baton Rouge (Most likely unless one or both lose), Charlottesville, Nashville, Columbus (not again), Morgantown, Ann Arbor, South Bend, Minneapolis
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  10/22: Austin, Tuscaloosa, Colorado Springs? (slim pickings this week - they might even go to El Paso or a Div 1-AA school for kicks).
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  10/29: Jacksonville, Minneapolis, Happy Valley, Lincoln, College Station, Stillwater.
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That's the update. Feel free to post your own comments so far. Remember, these guys set the agenda. Hold them accountable for their statements and coverage decisions.