The Wisconsin football team will once more dance in the national spotlight.
After beating Ohio State last Saturday and ascending to the No. 12 ranking in the ESPN/USA Today coaches poll, the team announced Monday that ESPN’s College GameDay will broadcast live from Camp Randall Stadium prior to the team’s matchup with Purdue.
Beginning at 9:30 a.m. the trio of host Chris Fowler and analysts Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit will be set up on the natural grass practice field just north of Camp Randall stadium to discuss the day’s biggest games and news from around college football.
The on air chemistry of Fowler, Corso and Herbstreit has given the show national recognition and has brought crowds of students to their traveling set in almost every location. Last weekend the set was at Florida State for its matchup with No.2 Miami. Its travel to Wisconsin is part of the first GameDay season since the shows inception in 1993 that the crew will broadcast from a different road location each weekend.
GameDay’s only other visit to Madison came in a September 1999 matchup between Wisconsin and Michigan. This visit will mark the first time UW will appear as a featured GameDay team without Michigan as an opponent (the two teams squared off in the 2000 telecast from Ann Arbor). For Purdue, the GameDay coverage marks the school’s first exposure as a featured team on the Saturday morning show.
Ranked No. 15 by the ESPN/USA Today coaches poll, the Boilermakers (5-1, 2-0 Big Ten) matchup with the Badgers (6-1, 3-0 Big Ten) pits two of the conference’s three undefeated teams against one another, with the Spartans from Michigan State rounding out the Big Ten teams with unscathed conference records (3-0).
The trip to Camp Randall will be the 21st GameDay broadcast from a Big Ten stadium which has the conference ranked second in appearances behind the Southeastern Conference’s 28.
The GameDay trio is headlined by the football experience of Lee Corso who has 28 years of coaching experience highlighted by a 10-year stint at Indiana University from 1973-1983. In 1987 he joined the cast at ESPN and has become recognized for his bold predictions on GameDay. Starting in 1999, Corso strung together 16 consecutive correct game of the week picks.
Chris Fowler brings a career of broadcasting experience to the GameDay set. A 1985 graduate from the University of Colorado, Fowler has been an anchor on Sportscenter, co-hosted the X-Games, and covered horse racing’s Triple Crown since joining ESPN in 1986. Fowler has covered basketball’s NCAA Final Four Since 1992 and since 1989, he has been the primary college football studio host for the network.
Kirk Herbstreit is the proverbial new guy on the set of GameDay, joining Corso and Fowler in 1996 after beginning work at ESPN in 1995. The 1993 graduate of Ohio State University earned four varsity letters as a Buckeyes quarterback between 1989 and 1992. As the starter and team captain in his senior season, Herbstreit passed for nearly 2,000 yards in guiding OSU to a second place finish in the Big Ten and a final AP ranking of No.18.
