ESPN’s College Gameday Set to Air Live from USC Campus for First Time

Kevin Jairaj-US PRESSWIRE

USC will host ESPN’s College Gameday for the 10th time on Saturday morning ahead of the big game against No. 5 Stanford. But for the first time ever, the iconic college football show will air live from USC’s campus, and not the peristyle end of the LA Coliseum.

The USC Athletic Department announced on Sunday night that the show will be airing from McCarthy Quad in the heart of USC’s university park campus.

Ironically, it won’t be the crew’s first visit to the picturesque quad between USC’s libraries. Last summer, College Gameday filmed several commercials at McCarthy Quad, with the USC campus filling in as a body double for a host of schools, including Florida State.

The move to an on-campus location has been considered in recent years due to the demand for a more fan-friendly venue, but had been turned away by USC’s Department of Public Safety over the logistics of foot traffic on campus.

On Saturday, the show will not only jockey for position with the tailgate parties on McCarthy Quad hosted by USC’s fraternities, but Homecoming festivities will be held throughout the campus to make for a wall-to-wall day of events before the 5 p.m. kickoff vs. Stanford.

This visit by College Gameday puts USC solely in 4th place on the all-time list of location hosts, just behind Michigan(11), Florida(12) and Ohio State(13).

For the longest time, the show rarely headed west for reasons relating to both logistics and exposure, as it wasn’t until 2004 that College Gameday came to the Coliseum. Since that appearance ahead of a top-10 showdown with Aaron Rodgers and the Cal Bears, the show has come to USC more than any other school in the country.

Lee Corso, the show’s old man in the middle, might be the man that USC fans look most on Saturday. The former coach is 15-0 all-time when he picks USC on Gameday, and has never been wrong when making the show’s final prediction when it involves USC. He’s a perfect 20-0, picking Notre Dame last November to keep the streak alive.

College Gameday will begin their live show on ESPN at 6am Pacific, Saturday morning.