Pat McAfee hypes National Guard flyover on ‘College GameDay’: ‘You hear that sound, your a** better run’

The long-awaited clash between LSU and Ole Miss will likely have the feel of a war on the grass of Vaught Hemingway Stadium on Saturday night.

To ring in the top-10 clash, which doubles as Lane Kiffin’s return game, helicopters from the Mississippi Army National Guard flew over the crowd gathered for College GameDay in the early morning. Viewers watching saw the flyover to open the ESPN pregame program, with cameras from above and below tracking the fearsome military choppers.

While GameDay anchor Rece Davis clarified that the National Guard was out solely for “paegantry” ahead of the historic Magnolia Bowl rivalry, Pat McAfee emphasized the American military might on display in Oxford, Miss.

“We certainly appreciate the hell out of the American military,” McAfee said as ESPN switched from a shot of the flyover to the GameDay desk. “And if you’re not the United States of America and you hear that sound, your a** better run.”

Pat McAfee: “We certainly appreciate the hell out of the American military. And if you’re not the United States of America and you hear that sound, your ass better run.”

Rece Davis: “That’s the one thing the two sides here can agree on, for sure.” pic.twitter.com/xKUoK3ygbC

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 19, 2026

As Davis transitioned to begin the show, he attempted to segue from McAfee’s rah-rah quip to the game at hand.

“That’s the one thing the two sides here can agree on, for sure,” Davis said of the rival fan bases.

Whether that’s true will be decided in Oxford and Baton Rouge. It probably isn’t wrong to generalize such a view in the deep South. The more curious aspect of McAfee and Davis’ comments is, especially at a time when the U.S. faces a stalemate in a war that polls say is deeply unpopular, why GameDay has continued to wade into political waters in each of the first three weeks of its season.