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CHARLOTTE — As ESPN’s College GameDay and Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff continue to battle for college football pregame show supremacy, another traveling program is expanding its nationwide footprint.
This season, the ACC Network’s ACC Huddle will broadcast from the campus of the conference’s marquee game of the week (10 a.m. to noon ET), regardless of which channel it airs on. Previously, the pregame show originated from the location of the ACC Network’s Saturday night primetime game, which often is the third- or fourth-best ACC game of the weekend.
So, with the SEC Network’s SEC Nation and Big Ten Network’s B1G Tailgate similarly traveling each week to a campus around their respective conferences, how many pregame shows is too many?
“It’s hard to describe what the pageantry of college football means to people, and I don’t think that there’s ever enough,” ACC Network senior director of programming Jeramy Michiaels told Front Office Sports.
In 2024, College GameDay averaged 2.2 million viewers, the most in the show’s 38-year history. To continue competing with the top dog, Big Noon Kickoff is adding Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy to its set this year.
New Kid on the Block
The revamped ACC Huddle will model itself after College GameDay, Michiaels said, but it will avoid broadcasting from the same site when ESPN’s flagship pregame show goes to an ACC campus. ACC Huddle will be at Clemson on Aug. 30, when the Tigers host LSU. That Saturday, College GameDay and Big Noon Kickoff will be in Columbus ahead of Texas–Ohio State.
“It’s great just being in those environments,” ACC Huddle analyst Eddie Royal, a former Virginia Tech and NFL receiver, told FOS. “That’s why everybody loves college football.”
This season, Royal, fellow analyst Eric Mac Lain, and host Taylor Tannebaum will be joined by former Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher, who won a national championship at Florida State.
