Inside The Huskies

ESPN Makes It Official: GameDay Is Coming to Montlake

The pregame show will visit Seattle for the third time before the UW-Oregon contest.

Dan Raley

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The Washington-Oregon football game will come with all of the pregame trimmings next Saturday, with ESPN revealing it will bring its popular College GameDay show to Montlake.

This means Rece Davis, Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard, Pat McAfee, Lee Corso and guests will sit on a stage on campus, surrounded by sign-waving fans, likely fronted by Husky and Ducks helmets, and presumably on Red Square, and talk football.

Beginning at an ungodly early morning hour, they'll tell stories, analyze the games, show video clips and make predictions. 

ESPN twice previously has brought GameDay to Montlake, setting up in 2013 and 2016, with the latter subjected to a rainy downpour throughout.

College GameDay was created as a studio show in 1987 and became a live broadcast six years later, with fan bases considering an ESPN visit a huge badge of honor. 

Shortly after 7 a.m., the sports cable network announced the UW would be its next GameDay destination from Dallas in the lead-up to the annual Red River Rivalry that involves an annual Texas-Oklahoma football game. 

Pregame festivities outside the Cotton Bowl included visits from A-list actor Matthew McConaughey and former Seahawks linebacker and B-list actor Brian Bosworth.

Similar to college football teams sending their equipment trucks to road game sites well in advance of kickoff, GameDay will transport its infrastructure to Seattle earlier in the week.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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