ESPN's 'College GameDay' at Miami ahead of the Florida-Miami college football game in 2025. Photo Credit: ESPN Photo Credit: ESPN
By Matt Yoder on

The most difficult job at ESPN just might be whoever it is that has to decide where College GameDay travels on a week-to-week basis because it seems like there is someone that is upset every week over its locale.

And now the criticism aimed against GameDay is coming from inside ESPN itself.

This Saturday, the legendary pregame program will travel to Tuscaloosa for a game between two schools who couldn’t be further apart in terms of tradition with College GameDay. It’s a rare Top 25 matchup between Alabama and Vanderbilt. The Commodores famously upset the Crimson Tide last year for their first win in the series since 1984.

It will be only Vanderbilt’s second time being featured on College GameDay while Alabama gets the nod for just the 61st time.

But the decision hasn’t come without some controversy for the second time in three weeks. Two weeks ago, College GameDay was criticized for prioritizing a matchup between undefeated Miami and 1-2 Florida, coming off  disastrous losses to LSU and USF. ESPN had plenty of great options, but chose to feature two bigger brands instead of undefeated Illinois and Indiana or Texas Tech and Utah.

This time around, ESPN is skipping an even bigger ACC matchup and classic rivalry in Florida State and Miami to go with the SEC battle. And it’s not sitting well with Roddy Jones.

Jones recently moved up to calling marquee games on ESPN after working on ACC Network for years. And the former Georgia Tech star doesn’t like that his former conference seems to be getting the shaft from ESPN, which is nothing new from the ACC side of things. He was asked about the decision by another ESPN personality in sideline reporter Kris Budden for SiriusXM College Sports and relayed his reasoning for feeling disrespected.

“I do a lot with the ACC, played in the ACC, love the conference, I’m fighting a losing battle. I feel like I am. Because there’s a lot of people in ACC land asking why isn’t GameDay at Florida State-Miami. To which the easy answer is Florida State lost last week. Then you follow up with, ok, where are they going? Vanderbilt-Alabama. Wait, didn’t Alabama lose to Florida State,” Jones asked.

“You’ve got teams with the same record… that is a historical rivalry. What do you say about Vanderbilt-Alabama that can’t be said in four sentences? We could take four days talking about Florida State-Miami. These two teams haven’t met as ranked teams in a decade. And here’s the other thing KB, you look at the rest of the ACC schedule, like the rest of the year, there’s not an obvious GameDay matchup. So GameDay has made their one trip to the ACC, which in the last five years, five trips. Made our one trip to the ACC and now we’ll just go off and do the SEC thing for the rest of the year and the Big Ten, Ohio State mainly. A lot of people in ACC country asking questions,” Jones added.

This is the reality that the ACC faces in their relationship with ESPN. They will always play second fiddle to the SEC. ESPN’s SEC contract is worth a lot more money, the conference draws bigger ratings, possesses bigger brands, and is concentrating all of the power in the sport in an axis of two between themselves and the Big Ten. It’s an uncomfortable truth of the realignment era. And television networks have been at the center of it. ESPN has gone all-in on featuring the SEC and the ACC will have to be content with whatever bones they get thrown their way.

Most neutrals would see Florida State-Miami as a much richer, interesting, historic game than Alabama-Vanderbilt. But that’s not always how the game is played. And the ACC unfortunately knows that better than anybody.

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