Credit: Nathan Giese/Avalanche-Journal
By Demetri Ravanos on

With all due respect to Jimmy Pitaro, in the public’s mind, Pat McAfee runs ESPN. His show commands a giant licensing fee. His complaints and paranoia led to the ouster of one of the network’s longest-tenured leaders. He can basically call his own shot in Bristol.

McAfee takes advantage of that status, and to be fair, why shouldn’t he? Star power only exists if the star flexes it. And McAfee has definitely flexed, perhaps never more than when he released his debut musical album. 

I think that album will be right at the center of his ultimate flex on his ESPN bosses and colleagues. Within the next month, I expect ESPN will announce that one of the songs from McAfee’s Diary of a Polarizing Figure will replace “Comin’ to Your City” as College GameDay’s new theme song.

That’s not me reporting anything. I have not had any conversations with anyone. Honestly, I wouldn’t even know who to call. I would run to Kalshi or Polymarket right now though if this was on their board. To me, it just seems like the next logical step for both McAfee’s singing career and the most important ESPN property that he touches.

Why would this happen?

“Comin’ to Your City” is as associated with College GameDay as the celebrity guest picker, but things change. Remember, after the farewell to Lee Corso in Week 1 last season, headgear, a bit that really was the show’s cornerstone, just went away. Why couldn’t a song suffer the same fate?

There are a lot of college football fans who could not tell you who sang the original version of “Comin’ to Your City” or that it was a radio hit two years before ESPN snatched it up. It’s become a Saturday morning institution for those fans, though.

Institution or not, ESPN has already proven there’s nothing sacred about the song.

Remember that the original artists, Big & Rich, were dropped in 2023 for a version re-recorded by Darius Rucker, Lainey Wilson, and the Cadillac Three. Do you think The Golden Girls would have ever treated Cindy Fee like that?

If a song can be re-recorded, then it can be replaced. Fans have already loudly shouted their disapproval for the new version. There’s no reason for ESPN not to put Pat McAfee more in the center of College GameDay than he already is.

McAfee is the show’s North Star now. He has transformed College GameDay from a TV show that happens to be filmed in front of an audience to a live show that happens to be on TV. Changing what a show fundamentally is is quite a flex, but replacing a 20-year institution with your own song might be the ultimate flex. 

If this does happen, it does two things for McAfee. First, it changes the narrative around him, at least temporarily. Even his loudest detractors would have to take a break from calling him “Pat MAGAfee” to resume complaining about how much ESPN is shoving him down our throats. 

Second, let’s be real, it would be the highest ceiling he could probably reach in his music career. I spoke to my friend Mike Biddle, who runs the very successful station 94.7 QDR in Raleigh, NC. This country radio station has been recognized as one of the best in America over and over again by both the CMAs and the Academy of Country Music.

For country music fans, radio still has a lot of influence. Biddle said he just cannot see any country stations playing McAfee’s songs in regular rotation. He said that maybe if College GameDay adopted one of McAfee’s songs as its new theme, he would encourage his morning show to play a clip while talking about football. Other stations, he theorized, could do the same, but this album isn’t getting the Ella Langley treatment.

How will it happen?

ESPN loves a press release, and the network’s communications staff would bend over backward to make sure this and every other sports site had their talking points on a new College GameDay theme. That’s why I wasn’t surprised we didn’t see any changes on the very first GameDay of the season. 

We got a press release about the song ESPN is using as this season’s college football anthem back on July 31. If McAfee’s song was going to lead off the first episode of College GameDay in 2026, there would have been an announcement in my inbox weeks before.

Instead, I think the network will use Kirk Herbstreit’s appearance on McAfee’s show a couple of weeks ago as their building block. Herby went a little overboard in praising the album and McAfee’s songwriting skills and then suggested McAfee perform one of the songs live on TV in front of a GameDay crowd.

The way I see it, McAfee performs the song, and then Rece Davis walks on stage to shake his hand, as Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy Kimmel might do with their musical guest. Then Davis will tell the crowd that the song they just heard will be the new College GameDay theme. 

This album may matter to McAfee’s fans, but it’s been met mostly with indifference online. As of this writing, Diary of a Polarizing Figure’s most popular track, “Pitbull and a Mugshot,” has over 150,000 plays on Spotify. By contrast, “Gimme Dat,” a collaboration between Nigerian pop stars Ayra Starr and Wizkid, was released the same day and already has nearly 69 million listens.

Waiting gives ESPN time to let McAfee build some anticipation in his fan base and work tracks into College GameDay’s rotation of songs that it plays in and out of commercial breaks. That will create a little more familiarity and hopefully, excitement.

So which song will it be?

I’m not here to judge which is McAfee’s best song. My colleague Sean Keeley already did a full review of Diary of a Polarizing Figure. I cannot be fair to bro country. To me, the whole genre sounds like a commercial for a protein shake for your truck. What I can do is put on my marketing hat and, through years of watching the Walt Disney Company make business and creative decisions, determine what it might be behind.

So let’s start with the easiest eliminator. Eight songs on the album are marked explicit by Spotify. Those are all out.

One of the six that are still on the board is all about smoking pot. It’s out too.

One is a song about how great it is to live in the South, written by a man who grew up in Pittsburgh and now lives in Indianapolis. Yes, ESPN can be shameless, but not that shameless. Plus, GameDay will have to go to Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oregon, and Los Angeles at some point this season, so let’s say McAfee’s autobiographical fantasy is out too.

That leaves us with three candidates, and one of them appears to have been written for this very purpose. That song is called “Good Times.” It’s a lot of call-and-response and includes the following lyrics.

I wanna small town

And an old dirt road

I wanna crick bank

Where the water rolls slow

I mean, if that isn’t designed to be played behind images of college campuses, I don’t know what is.

Look, Diary of a Polarizing Figure just isn’t sonically for me. I know plenty of people who feel the same way have already taken to the internet to declare the album is the worst thing they have ever heard.

I’ll be more fair and say that while I think the lyrics sound like Shutdown Fullcast host Spencer Hall’s bit about every country song being “Cold Beer Dirt Road Blue Jean Cutie Truck” by Morgan Logan Bailey Marshall Mason, I was pleasantly surprised by McAfee’s voice. 

Even if that’s all Diary of a Polarizing Figure has going for it, it’s all McAfee and ESPN need. The network will find ways to support this album. Its market penetration is a win for McAfee, and wins for McAfee lift ESPN’s boat. Replacing “Coming to Your City” with “Good Times” in the College GameDay intro is an easy gesture of goodwill to ESPN’s central figure. That’s why it makes too much sense not to happen.

About Demetri Ravanos

Demetri Ravanos is a writer and broadcaster living in Raleigh, NC. He is also the host of This Team is Killing Us, a podcast about the Carolina Panthers.

View all posts by Demetri Ravanos