Rece Davis has been at ESPN for over 25 years and has had the opportunity to cover a variety of sports over his great career. In recent years, the broadcaster who was born in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, has become the main voice on the network synonymous with hosting college football and college basketball for ESPN.
Davis was a guest on the Gramlich and Mac Lain podcast and he talked about what his goal always was in the industry. It wasn’t necessarily to be the host of College GameDay:
“My goal was always to have the most prominent position that I could in college football and college basketball. I’ve been asked many times if GameDay was my goal. It wasn’t. I love Gameday and I think I have the best job in television, but Chris [Fowler] was hosting that show and I didn’t feel like I had to have that.”
“I had what I considered to be as enjoyable a run as I could imagine in-studio for all those years, particularly (no disrespect to all of the other guys I worked with that are great) that decade-long run with Lou Holtz and Mark May. Mark and I were together for several years before Lou came and joined us . I cherished that time as well. It was time to make a change of some sort, whether it was into the booth or as it turned out to GameDay and I’m very grateful for the opportunity.”
In his early years at ESPN, Davis was hosting shows such as NBA 2Night and RPM2Night and he covered soccer and horse racing as well. While some of these sports weren’t Davis’s expertise, it did prepare him for the role that he is in now:
“I did soccer and horse racing, all things that were completely out of my wheelhouse and I think it helped me long-term to not only learn how to prepare things that you don’t know or don’t have any preconceived notions about, but it gives you some confidence to execute things that are outside your field of interest.”
Since becoming the host of College GameDay in 2015, Davis and the GameDay crew have tried to improve the broadcast more in terms of getting the crowd more involved in the show:
“I think the thing that hopefully we’ve gotten better at over the years is capturing what’s going on in the crowd rather than just using it as a backdrop. They are like another character on the show. That was probably the biggest adjustment,” said Davis.
Even though the atmosphere for GameDay can be electric, Davis mentioned one of the biggest challenges for the show is trying to highlight the games of the day and not just the game they are at:
“Finding the balance between capturing the essence and energy of where you are and not allowing Gameday to turn into a pregame show simply for that game is one of the things that’s a challenge every week. You want to give the venue its due, but it’s also the pregame show for the entire day in college football.”
I do not remember Davis hosting RPM2night I think he is underrated as a play by play voice he used to do the Thursday games and is great on College basketball