College GameDay is college football’s biggest cheerleader and its biggest bully. But it wasn’t always that way. That is, of course, when you remember what took place nine years ago Wednesday in Oxford, MS. On Oct. 4, 2014, pop star Katy Perry joined the set of College GameDay and put together a memorable performance.
You can’t tell the story of College GameDay without it.
Perry made her grand appearance during the show’s first visit to Oxford. Looking back, it’s hard to imagine that any guest in the history of GameDay has gone as viral as Perry did on that fateful day. You could argue that Perry is the best celebrity guest picker ever. And she did all this with a minimal connection to the school and Oxford. It turns out that Perry, who was born in California, admitted to ESPN’s Chris Fowler that her manager was from Mississippi and was a Rebels fan.
But based on her appearance, you would never be able to tell that her ties to the school were a stretch at best.
That fateful Alabama-Ole Miss game was the first college football game that she would attend, and boy, was it a doozy.
Perry came prepared, as she knew the innuendos and little intricacies that you’d have to be on SEC message boards to understand. She brought her own props from a huge pencil to corn dogs, which she flung at the mere mention of LSU, and she even eventually threw one of the fried treats on a stick at the camera after Lee Corso’s headgear pick.
Speaking of Corso’s headgear pick, Perry did something that’s never been done on the show before. She removed Corso’s elephant head when he picked Alabama. To this day, no other celebrity picker has had the gall to do so, but no one would dare try to replicate how Perry stole the show on that fateful day.
She asked if one of the games she was picking had the (South Carolina) Gamecocks but omitted “Game” and also hit on Oklahoma quarterback Trevor Knight (“Call me”).
“Actually, I’m picking this one based on looks,” said Perry regarding a primetime matchup between No. 4 Oklahoma and No. 25 TCU. “Trevor Knight, do you hear me? The quarterback for Oklahoma, we don’t mind, so I’m gonna go with him. Trevor Knight, call me!”
Perry turned in one of the best records gaming the show’s guest pickers (7-2) and was the only one of Fowler, Desmond Howard, Kirk Herbretsit and Corso to correctly predict an Ole Miss upset over Alabama.
The Alabama-Ole Miss game was the first college football game that she would attend, and boy, was it a doozy. Perry didn’t want any part of leaving the game early, as was originally the plan. Nor did she want to continue watching the game from a luxury box. So, she was on the sideline as Ole Miss broke its 10-year losing streak against the Crimson Tide.
Following the 23-17 upset over Alabama, Perry was later scene celebrating the win among the college students in the bars in Oxford.
While it’s unlikely we’ll ever see anything close to the likes of Perry’s appearance again, she’ll go down as the best—and most entertaining—guest picker in the history of College GameDay. Even as the show picks fights with Washington State and its fans, it can still hang its hat on this unforgettable moment, which still holds up nearly a decade later.
