It would be dishonest of me to sit here with a take on whether or not ESPN did the right thing in letting Lee Fitting go earlier this week. I do not know any details about how the network reached its decision, so who am I to offer an opinion?
Instead, I will ask a simple question – is 2023 going to be a year of change or a year of treading water for College GameDay?
David Pollack was one of the ESPN talents that found out they were out of a job at the end of June. Less than a week later, Gene Wojciechowski learned that he wasn’t coming back either. Add those revelations to what we already knew about Chris Fallica’s defection to FOX, and it is clear that it won’t be business as usual for the show in 2023.
So where does the change end and when does it end? When the change is done, what are we left with?
In the last month, we have already seen the network overhaul NBA Countdown and Monday Night Countdown. ESPN isn’t averse to adding new faces and new voices to established brands in order to freshen things up or add a little star power. College GameDay got that treatment just last year with the addition of Pat McAfee.
This is a wildly different situation though. Maybe you could argue that, with five analysts, three reporters, a host and a betting correspondent, College GameDay was bloated, but it certainly wasn’t broken.
Fitting’s exit throws a lot into question for the long term future of the show. He is, after all, the man that turned the show from something made for college football fans into a cultural phenomenon. The show has two faces: Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit. Without Fitting, it isn’t unreasonable to ask if they are considering how much longer they will be a part of the show.
Lee Corso just turned 88 years old. He has been very public with his struggles speaking clearly after suffering multiple strokes. Plenty of websites, this one included, have publicly speculated about how much longer we can reasonably expect to see the former coach on television.
I am not saying it is time for Corso to go by any stretch. I don’t think we can dismiss the possibility that Fitting has been holding the people at ESPN that do think that at bay. Corso has earned the right to make the decision himself regarding retirement. That doesn’t guarantee that he will get to though.
Questions surround the future of Kirk Herbstreit too. There is no doubt in my mind that college football is his first sports love, but I also wouldn’t blame him for a “been there, done that” attitude. He and Fitting are reportedly extremely close. He is also very outspoken about how he feels about Corso.
If change is the name of the game at College GameDay and the people he cares the most about are not there anymore, it doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibility that Herbstreit would say that he is turning his attention to Amazon and the NFL.
So what is 2023 on College GameDay in the eyes of ESPN executives? Is it the start of a new era or is it a year the show has to survive before a more grandiose reset?
When the 2022 season ended with Georgia’s demolition of TCU inside LA’s SoFi Stadium, this conversation and these questions were not even on my radar. Since June though, so much has happened so fast. I am left trying to contextualize it all.
ESPN knows what it has in College GameDay. I don’t think that the network is eager to break up a show that has been that successful. Individuals have their own plans and desires though. Those can be the hardest to make sense of.
Lee Fitting built a brand that is strong enough to survive his exit. Now all we can do is wait and see if the network, executives, and talent want it to survive or if they see the exit of Fitting as an opportunity to make drastic changes to the start of every college football Saturday.
Demetri Ravanos is a columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. He is also the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host on the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
