College GameDay On the Clock – Alabama

For the sixth time in eight weeks, College GameDay returned to the SEC for #1 Mississippi State vs. #5 Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Going into this week, the SEC had received a little more than twice the amount of airtime of any other conference.

The day featured five matchups between ranked teams, two in the SEC, two in the Big Ten, and one in the ACC. The last time GameDay was in an SEC location, the conference received nearly 4 times the coverage as any other conference. However, the last two College GameDay broadcasts seemed to be more equitable between the conferences. Would this trend continue this week in Alabama? Here’s this week’s results from College GameDay On the Clock…

SEC: 59:49

ACC: 20:48

Big Ten: 13:15

Pac-12: 6:18

Big 12: 2:10

Independents – 1:10

Ivy League: 1:00

Back in the confines of the Southeastern Conference, GameDay gave the SEC nearly three times the amount of airtime as any other conference, and cumulatively more than the rest of the conferences combined.

Going back to Week 9, here are the total cumulative times for each conference:

SEC: 2:14:19

Big Ten: 59:22

Big 12: 56:05

Pac-12: 48:54

ACC: 36:20

Non-Power 5: 19:53

It has been clear the last few weeks that College GameDay’s location does offer a sort of “homefield advantage.” That is, the location where GameDay is set gives that game and/or conference a little extra airtime. But is that homefield advantage equal?

The Big Ten, for instance, outside of the East Lansing College Gameday, received about 13:24 of average airtime. In East Lansing, the Big Ten received 19:08, an increase of 5:44 above the average, or about 43%. The Big 12 has averaged about 12:44 and received 17:51 in Morgantown, an increase of about 5 minutes as well, or 40%.

However, the SEC, outside of SEC locations has received about 30:19 in coverage. But in GameDay locations, the average has been 1:00:08, or a 99% increase in airtime.

With a comparably weaker slate of games on tap in the Power 5 conferences this week (there projects to be only 2 Top 25 matchups, both in the Pac 12), College Gameday will be visiting Cambridge, Massachusetts for the Harvard-Yale game. With the slate basically clean and the SEC facing several out-of-conference matchups with non-Power 5 schools, it’ll be very interesting to see how GameDay covers the day’s action.