4. How will Rece Davis replacing Chris Fowler affect the GameDay brand and presentation this season?

Kevin McGuire:

I have been saying for a while now Rece Davis will slide right into Fowler’s chair without much of a problem, and still believe that will be the case. Davis has anchored ESPN’s basketball day version of the show so he knows what he is asked to do. As far as replacements go, Davis is a natural to follow in Fowler’s footsteps in this capacity. GameDay is still going to be GameDay regardless of Fowler or Davis. It’s going to have its fun with the celebrity picks and Lee Corso’s mascot heads, it’s going to offer a look at the sentimental side of the game with Tom Rinaldi and it’s going to get its share of breakdowns and analysis. What it can do to improve is cut down on the internally manufactured carnival barking in the embrace debate mold that drive fans away.

Allen Kenney:

Replacing Chris Fowler with Rece Davis probably won’t affect the show one iota. If anything, the GameDay team should benefit from a fresh voice in the mix. That’s not a knock on Fowler so much as the reality of avoiding complacency.

Matt Yoder:

It’s like the Colts going straight from Peyton Manning to Andrew Luck. GameDay should experience no drop off whatsoever with Rece Davis on board as he’s deserved a promotion like this for a long time. I thought the change might have happened last year, but with Fowler focusing on the broadcast booth this year, it’s Davis’ time to shine on Saturday mornings.

Matt Zemek:

As much as Chris Fowler was a natural in the role of GameDay host, this is something Rece Davis was born and made for as well. Rece has, after all, hosted the basketball version of GameDay for years. He’s just as smooth as Fowler and, if anything, conveys a slightly lighter tone. He’ll be fantastic, and what’s more is that no one is going to dispute that assertion.

GameDay’s main issue is Lee Corso. He’s basically being used as a prop at this point. As others have said — including people within the Awful Announcing ranks — Rick Neuheisel needs to be the next GameDay analyst. He’d have so much fun on a broadcast but take the program into the next few decades.

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5. Danny Kanell has an increased role at ESPN, and in many ways, he’s become the most high-profile anti-SEC voice in the network’s college football stable. Florida State and Ohio State fans in particular, and ACC and Big Ten fans in general, responded well to his tweets and commentary in the latter half of the 2015 season. Is this a net plus for ESPN’s coverage? Is it a necessary evil? Is it unnecessary? Or somewhere in between?

Matt Zemek:

The SEC-Big Ten conference rivalry and the SEC-ACC rivalry are the two most contentious “conference superiority rivalries” in college football. When the ACC and SEC rivalry games arrive in late November, the sense of a turf battle between fans of those two conferences is never more apparent.

ACC fans have loved Kanell’s ability and willingness to punch back at the SEC, and frankly, I can’t blame them in an immediate context after all they’ve had to go through the previous several years.

However, the rise of SEC-centric opinion was never something one should have welcomed. Giving Kanell an anti-SEC platform creates oppositional speech, but the same “First Take / embrace debate” dynamic we need to see a lot less of on ESPN. In time, this needs to be weeded out, but the elevation of Kanell strongly indicates we’re headed in the opposite direction.

Matt Yoder:

I like Kanell a lot as an analyst and as a general TV personality (and ESPN likes him too, which is why he’s Ryen Russillo’s permanent co-host on ESPN Radio every weekday afternoon)… that is, as long as he stays away from the SEC trolling that he’s dabbled in. ESPN’s perceived SEC bias is a favorite topic here in the midwest and it really came to a head last year with the launch of SEC Network. Is Kanell’s anti-SEC rhetoric a response from ESPN to tone down that criticism? Is it a counter-balance? Or is it just his natural perspective? The troubling thing to me is I don’t really know the answers to those questions.

Here’s what I will say – for years those of us in Ohio have had to put up with Mark May’s anti-OSU schtick that has led a multitude of fans to turn off ESPN and cut it out of their daily lives. We celebrated his removal from College Football Final like a national holiday. But If Kanell becomes just another version of May targeting a different fanbase (SEC vs Ohio State), he’ll be no different and no better than May was. And that would be the ultimate disappointment from ESPN.

Allen Kenney:

I guess the Worldwide Leader’s critics would consider Kanell a counterweight to what they view as a pro-SEC bias in the rest of the network’s coverage. If that’s truly ESPN’s objective in featuring Kanell so prominently – and I’m not necessarily saying that it is – the intellectual dishonesty behind that strategy is disappointing.

Do college football media members as a whole kowtow too much to the SEC? Probably. But pitting Kanell or anyone else as an outlandish heel just highlights whatever biases might exist.

Kevin McGuire:

I think Kanell has blossomed in his growing role at ESPN. He offers a unique taste to what has become otherwise stale and repetitive commentary in many respects. Does he go overboard at times? Yeah, maybe he does, but it helps balance the commentary, and fans see and respect that. For a network that, for whatever reason, continues to fend off the SEC-bias rhetoric, Kanell is a glimmer of hope that ESPN’s coverage can be more balanced when needed. My concern is having employees that are labeled as Pro-SEC or anti-SEC (or whatever conference). I want a network that is going to have voices that have the ability to look at things in more black and white without feeling the pressure to side with one conference or another. The problem is, with the way the sports media has grown and evolved, the space for those types of personalities is being sucked dry.

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6. With Mark May and Lou Holtz out of College Football Final and Joe Tessitore in, is that going to make you watch, or is any non-game ESPN content not part of your media diet at this point?

Matt Yoder:

I am 1000000% more likely to watch College Football Final with Joe Tess/Adnan Virk, Joey Galloway, and Danny Kanell than I ever was with Lou Holtz and Mark May. That’s why ESPN should heed the caution above and not simply spin the wheel to troll new fanbases this time around, or else that percent will drop again to 0.

Matt Zemek:

With Holtz and May, I simply did not care one whit about CFB Final over the past two years. I gave up on the program. Now, I will give CFB Final a chance… with the qualifier being that there have to be zero competitive games going on in the Pac-12 or other leagues during the late-night window. Live football will always trump talk, but if there’s no (close, interesting) action to be found, I’ll bring Joe Tess into my late Saturday nights this fall.

Kevin McGuire:

Yes. Without question the shakeup of the College Football Final show was long overdue and bringing in new voices and personalities should benefit the show overall. While I will say I am now more likely to watch the show than I was with the old crew, I must admit the odds I actually end up watching it are probably not very good. I personally do not watch many sports highlights shows any more, but if there is some added commentary and reactionary conversation without resorting to the “Who’s In” debates and silly sketches in courtrooms, I am more than willing to give it a chance.

Allen Kenney:

Honestly, I can’t say that I watch any college football shows on ESPN now – just the games. I’m not boycotting the network or anything like that. I just don’t find much of it particularly compelling now.

About Matt Zemek

Editor,
@TrojansWire
| CFB writer since 2001 |

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