ESPN Has Already Cut College GameDay Stars, Could Cutting an Hour Come Next?

College GameDay is an institution. There’s no way around it. Even the most ardent Anti-ESPNer would list the show in the “things ESPN does right” column.

But what does the future hold in store for the program as the 2023 college football season nears?

In the ESPN layoffs, a pair of College GameDay stalwarts — analyst David Pollack and reporter Gene Wojciechowski — were cut. I’m not ignorant enough to think that there was more to these cuts than simply dollars and cents, but I question how much foresight went into the decision to lay off two of the program’s essential pieces to the first hour.

First, in Pollack’s case, he brought a much-needed, almost recent player perspective to the show, which is saying something. Pollack ended his college football career in 2005…which if you’re not counting, is the better part of two decades ago. And when “I played more than 20 years ago” is the youngest analyst you’ve got, you’ve got a problem.

But the majority of Pollack’s work on the program came in the first hour, which debuted in 2010. If you viewed the first hour as a separate program from the two-hour Rece Davis, Desmond Howard, Lee Corso, and Kirk Herbstreit show that it essentially was, Pollack was the show’s defacto lead analyst.

In the case of Gene Wojciechowski, features he reported on produced were often essential to the first hour of the show. The man excelled in telling the untold stories — whether heartwrenching or lighthearted — and, along with Tom Rinaldi, became synonymous with what made the program the college football show of record.

So the question remains: where does the first hour of College GameDay go from here? It’s just simply not possible that the show punts on the 9:00 AM ET hour, right?

When I played out the conversation inside the walls of the Worldwide Leader in my head, I envisioned someone saying “We’re dropping the first hour of the show, right?”, followed by an executive saying “No. We can’t. We make too much money on the show to drop it down to two hours”.

Which would have me questioning why two of the biggest contributors to the show saw their positions eliminated, but that’s a topic for a different day.

But genuinely, I don’t know where College GameDay really goes from here. Do Rece, Desmond, Kirk, and Corso just expand their time on the show to a complete three-hour show? God bless Lee Corso, but we need to start seeing less of him — not more — in 2023.

The format of the show lends itself to having more voices, more contributors, more perspective, and hyper-focused topics on the location of the show. But now two of the key cogs that fit into that format are gone.

College GameDay’s first hour can serve as a proving ground for future contributors. Will ESPN fill the shoes vacated by Pollack and Wojciechowski? They certainly have to do something. I just wonder if the first hour becomes an introduction to the location, an introduction to the biggest shows of the college football weekend, an interview with the visiting coach for the game of the day, an interview with the home coach, and a football follies segment before the real meat of the show begins.

The other possibility is ESPN simply returns to starting the show at 10:00 AM ET, and goes completely head-to-head with Big Noon Kickoff.

Or…wild card! ESPN hosts a two-hour College GameDay from 9:00-11:00 AM ET, and kicks off the worst Eastern time zone SEC game of the week at 11:00 AM to get a jump start on the college football day. The constant talk about the next Pac-12 TV contract is creating the coveted 4th window of the day. Would moving the first kickoff of the day up to 11:00 AM ET help make the 4th window more accessible? Hell yeah, it would.

Now, I don’t view either of those last two situations as realistic. But I do wonder what the future holds for College GameDay — and specifically the first hour — after layoffs affected ESPN’s most popular program.

Garrett Searight

Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing bi-weekly industry features and a weekly column. He has previously served as Program Director and Afternoon Co-Host on 93.1 The Fan in Lima, OH, and is the radio play-by-play voice of Northern Michigan University hockey. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.