The Week 1 edition of College GameDay on ESPN leading into the matchup between Notre Dame and Texas A&M drew an average of 2.5 million viewers, representing the program’s third most-watched regular season episode of all time. The show featured host Rece Davis with analysts Desmond Howard, Kirk Herbstreit, Pat McAfee, Nick Saban and Lee Corso, who made his regular-season debut. Additionally, college football insider Pete Thamel, college football betting analyst ‘Stanford Steve’ Coughlin and reporters Jen Lada and Jess Simms appeared on the Week 1 edition of the program as well.
Heisman Trophy winner and former Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel joined the program as its guest picker as well ahead of the prime time matchup. Other special guests on the program included Rich Clark, executive director of the College Football Playoff, along with Aggies head coach Mike Elko and former linebacker Von Miller. The show also featured the return of McAfee’s Kicking Contest, which resulted in an attendee winning $50,000 after being granted a second attempt.
The final hour of the program, which included the panel making their selections for games, averaged a total of 3.2 million viewers. As a whole, the pregame show was up 47% from Week 1 of last season and marked the most-watched pre-November episode ever. This followed a strong performance for its Week 0 broadcast from Dublin, Ireland ahead of the Aer Lingus College Football Classic between Florida State and Georgia Tech. The first international edition of the program averaged 1.6 million viewers and accounted for the program’s most-watched Week 0 episode of all time, up 41% over the previous record in 2022.
The Week 2 edition of College GameDay will emanate from Ann Arbor, Mich. as the defending national champion Michigan Wolverines face the Texas Longhorns. Airing from 9 a.m. to noon EST on ESPN and ESPNU, the aforementioned panel will return; however, a guest picker for the episode has yet to be announced.
