Desmond Howard, Rece Davis, Nick Saban, Pat McAfee, guest picker Scottie Scheffler, Lee Corso, and Kirk Herbstreit on the set of College GameDay Built by the Home Depot at the University of Texas. Photo by Allen Kee / ESPN Images

Is the NFL trying to be more like college football?

College football is a unique experience when it comes to sports and sports fandom. The passion of college football fans all around the country is unmatched—and not just from those on the “lunatic fringe.” It’s one of the reasons why the sport is more popular than ever before.

One of the best ways this is seen is the weekly road shows for the major network pregame shows. ESPN’s College GameDay has been going on the road for the better part of 30 years now. And it’s such a huge deal that whoever GameDay decides to visit makes news on its own.

Whenever the show visits a school for the first time or makes a tough decision with multiple big games each week, it’s something fans pay great attention to – as they should! There are few better sights in sports than hundreds, if not thousands of fans, bringing their signs, their energy, and their passion to the show… even if it’s before dawn on the West Coast. It’s no coincidence that GameDay had their best season ever this year in viewership.

With Fox Sports making a bigger push into college football, they’ve made a similar effort with Big Noon Kickoff. Although they lost ground to College GameDay this year, they’ve also secured a footprint when it comes to college football pregame road shows. You don’t see DJ Khaled with a crowd-surfing attempt every day.

But while this college football tradition has been going on for years, the country’s most popular sport – professional football – has failed to capture the same momentum.

When you think of NFL pregame shows, you often think of a bunch of former players gathered together in a sterile studio breaking down news that everyone already knows, maybe an interesting feature or two, and some forced laughter. As far as environments go, you can’t get much further away from the organic energy of a college football tailgate.

However, as we enter into 2025 that may be changing as the NFL’s television partners are going on the road more than ever before.

ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown has largely aired from the stadium site as the network has devoted much of its Monday daytime coverage to its primetime football telecast. NBC has had both a studio and stadium crew for a while now, and Netflix did the same with their Christmas Day game coverage. Fox NFL Sunday has had an annual broadcast from a military base in honor of veterans day as well.

With the announcement that NBC was taking their entire Football Night in America crew to Detroit this week for the showdown between the Vikings and Lions for the NFC’s top seed, it shows that the league and its television partners are definitely interested in more dynamic pregame shows taking place around the country.

But most of those telecasts have been done from the field in the stadium. While it’s a slight upgrade on the cookie-cutter studio environment and gives a little more juice, there’s still not a lot of interaction with fans.

What the NFL is really missing is what The NFL Today on CBS showed was possible earlier this season when they got initiated into the Bills Mafia by jumping through tables live on the air with a raucous audience in the background.

That broadcast was not your normal NFL pregame show, and that’s a great thing! Whereas college football pregame shows feed on the energy of the crowd to get you hyped for wall-to-wall Saturday coverage, most NFL fans feel as though their pregame shows are entirely skippable.

How much would that change if the networks went and tailgated with fans as CBS did in Buffalo earlier this season? There would be logistical challenges, yes. The networks are already paying billions of dollars to the NFL in rights fees and the prospect of taking a studio show around the country would certainly be more expensive. Who knows if some of the individuals who have done a pregame show for decades would even be interested in such a shift? But then again, maybe that’s a sign that some new blood can bring some positive change to NFL pregame shows.

But when has the NFL ever been content to play second fiddle to anybody? After seeing College GameDay’s record ratings and the success of the pregame atmosphere in Buffalo, the NFL and its partners should totally invest in more road shows in 2025. And don’t just put them on the field in an empty stadium – put them outside with the fans. Could you imagine how awesome it would be if these shows went to places like Green Bay, Philly, New Orleans, Chicago, and elsewhere around the country?

It would bring a whole new dynamic to the NFL Sunday schedule and actually give something worth watching. If Jim Nantz is for it, who could be against it?