ESPN’s College GameDay is heading to Happy Valley this weekend for a top-five matchup between the Penn State Nittany Lions and Ohio State Buckeyes.
Coming along for the ride is four-time GameDay guest picker and comedian Keegan-Michael Key.
.@KeeganMKey is returning to Penn State as this week’s guest picker 🙌 pic.twitter.com/fEGpJkoJXb
— College GameDay (@CollegeGameDay) October 31, 2024
Key went to Detroit Mercy for undergrad but sports a graduate degree from Penn State, and that seems to be where his football rooting loyalties lie. The comedian is one of just two non-football players to appear as a guest picker in Happy Valley, with the other being Lara Spencer of ABC’s Good Morning America.
Saturday’s game marks ESPN’s signature college football roadshow’s fourth top-five matchup of the year. Last year, GameDay did not have a single top-five matchup last year until traveling to Ohio State-Michigan in the season’s final week.
It’s been a banner year so far for GameDay.
The show is tracking to have one of its best viewership seasons in years, partly due to two new talent acquisitions, Pat McAfee and Nick Saban. Ohio State-Penn State will also mark the fourth time this season that GameDay has opted to attend a game that will not air on the ESPN family of networks. This continues a trend of the show going to the most important game of the week, regardless of what network will air the game.
Of note: Today, Indiana is the third @B1Gfootball program to host ESPN’s @CollegeGameDay this season – for games that aired on FOX, NBC & BTN, respectively.
GameDay takes great pride in being THE national pregame show for college football. The game site choices reflect that. pic.twitter.com/omHglMiyJ6
— bill hofheimer (@bhofheimer_espn) October 26, 2024
For Keegan-Michael Key, a fourth appearance on GameDay is no small feat. But is this really the best celebrity Penn State has to offer? No shade to Key, but four appearances for a school as large as Penn State seems to me that the Nittany Lions are severely under-indexing in celebrity alums. And it wasn’t even his undergraduate school!
In any case, we should all be in for a laugh at 11:45 a.m. ET Saturday morning.
[ESPN]
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.