Gameday is a leech on a$$ of the game. It is a giant pile of everything that is wrong with college football - glamor over substance, hype over on-field production. They are the reason college football is gravitating more towards how you look rather than how you play.
And exposure? College Gameday doesn't give exposure, it rides the coattails of the exposure inherent in the game. Gameday doesn't make the game - the game makes Gameday. Everyone has this backwards, as if the game isn't important if these fools don't show up. It's one of the most disheartening things for me to see people wait with bated breath to see if Gameday will come to justify the importance of their team's game. We're freaking NEBRASKA. Who in the world thinks we need ESPN's Gameday to make our games important? We fill stadiums across this country - what possible validation can some yahoos yucking it up on a gameshow set provide us? What possible validation can they give Florida, Alabama, USC, Oklahoma, Texas, Ohio State, Michigan, etc?
Everyone has the cart before the horse here. Gameday is nothing. THE GAME is everything.
I don't really agree with most of this. Pageantry is a significant part of the great tradition of college football. And yes, GameDay is part pageantry. But it's also part substance, and I think CF is one of the better journalists in the sport. Although I don't regularly watch the entire show (I'm either driving to Lincoln or sleeping), I mostly enjoy what I see.
It's a great display of the excitement and passion of the fan base, and I don't see how it takes anything away from the game. The fans aren't thinking about GameDay come kickoff.
Even if you don't personally enjoy it, you can't deny the impact is has culturally. And recruits are observers of the culture who can be swayed by seeing a great GameDay crowd, just as they can be swayed by seeing the latest incarnation of Oregon's uniforms (regardless of how many fans may despise them).
For those that want it, I think there's a chance we could get GameDay @ Wisconsin and then vs. Ohio St. next year. Those are historic games.
This is like saying McDonald's is a "great display" of American cuisine. It's not - it's garbage. It happens to be ubiquitous garbage, and well-advertised, but it's still garbage.
People have sold pet rocks to the masses, and the masses bought them. Because the masses buy something does not make it a worthy thing. It means they have been sold something, and in this case, something they do not need.
Sure, Gameday provides some information. Sure, there are decent reporters associated with it. But because it has a modicum of worth does not make it worthy.
If some people like Gameday, I'm not telling them to stop. Some folks just love their Big Mac, too. More power to them. But if there are going to be 20 threads per year bemoaning the fact that we don't "get" Gameday, there will be posts in those threads denouncing Gameday for being what it is - a sideshow, full of clowns, with little impact on what makes college sports great.
