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“Interesting” decision discussed in this entry at Card Chronicle. All of the following is taken from the article —
The first 2014-15 installment of ESPN’s “College GameDay” will be taking place on Jan. 17 at Hilton Coliseum in preparation for Iowa State’s home game against Kansas. This news was met with contempt by a number of Louisville fans, who were expecting the program to finally make it to the KFC Yum Center to celebrate the Cards’ marquee matchup with Duke on that same day.
The college hoops world outside of Louisville was also puzzled by the decision, but as it turns out, coming to the Derby City was never even an option for ESPN.
The Sporting News’ Kami Mattioli discussed the decision with ESPN College Sports PR manager Rachel Siegel, who served up some answers.
GameDay can only select between two “flex” games for each of the show’s first six weeks; therefore, its only options for the Jan. 17 game were either West Virginia-Texas or Iowa State-Kansas.
For clarification, a “flex” game is a particular game in which the tip time can be changed or “flexed” to accomodate TV programming – similar to what NFL teams do. Typically, these games are chosen months in advance as ESPN works with schools to pre-select potential flex options prior to the season.
Siegel also told Sporting News that there will be a set present at the Yum! Center for the Jan. 17 game – just not College GameDay’s.
As for the speculation that the Cardinals’ noon tip could have presented a problem for the GameDay crew, whose show typically airs from 11 a.m. to noon, she said: “We could probably have worked around that.”
Why Louisville-Duke, a pair of teams that began the season ranked in the top 8, wasn’t one of the flex options already is another issue.
Since 2010, no college basketball program has won more games than Louisville, a fact which still hasn’t resulted in GameDay making its first appearance at the Yum Center. Last March, Rece Davis told Card Chronicle that he expected that to change in 2015.
The weird thing is why it wasn’t the flex game? And I thought that all basketball GameDay decisions were done before the season began. Has this changed?
I get Kansas @ Iowa State. I really do. Hoiberg has Iowa State with as much relevancy in a major sport as they have had over the past decade. Maybe they wanted to go do something not named Duke…appear not to be UNC-CHeat/Duke biased.
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