Rece Davis is taking over as the host of ESPN’s Wimbledon coverage this year, Front Office Sports has learned.
The longtime College GameDay host will join new analyst Andy Roddick for ESPN’s “first ball to last ball” coverage from Monday, June 29 through Sunday, July 12. Davis and Malika Andrews will host live on-site coverage as well as Breakfast at Wimbledon.
At Wimbledon, Davis succeeds Chris McKendry as host, as she shifts to a play-by-play role. ESPN launched a major revamp of its tennis announce team in January.
Davis spoke with Front Office Sports about the challenge of hosting ESPN’s coverage of one of the world’s premier sporting events, the seismic impact of Pat McAfee and Nick Saban on GameDay, and the school he’d most like to visit with the traveling pregame show.
This interview has been lightly edited for space and clarity:
Front Office Sports: How did a college football guy from Alabama land this sweet gig?
Rece Davis: It was just a product of discussions about how my role could expand at ESPN, at different times, while we were in our most recent contract negotiations a little over a year ago.
They asked if I’d be interested in doing something like that. I said, “Absolutely.” Certainly, this is one of the greatest events on the entire sporting calendar. You jump at it. I’m not coming in looking at this as if I’m bringing some type of deep, insightful knowledge of tennis that hasn’t been revealed prior to this. But I do think I have the skillset that can allow people with me on the set to thrive and to make our coverage as dynamic and insightful as it can be. I’m really fired up about working with Andy Roddick.
FOS: How has your GameDay experience helped prepare you for Wimbledon?
RD: One thing that GameDay helps you with, with other sports, is that you are very comfortable allowing other personalities to shine. Knowing when to push back, hopefully.
Is it easier for me, with my knowledge of football, to know exactly what to push back on and how? Of course. There’s no sense in dancing around that. But I’ve done my homework on this. I’ve worked very hard. I’ve known for over a year I’d be doing this. It’s not like I started prepping last week.
I’ve tried to immerse myself. Listening to podcasts. Reading stuff. Talking to people. One of our researchers I work with on the NFL Draft played tennis in college. He’s been an integral part of the Wimbledon research team.
I’m very comfortable working with people who are highly accomplished and who want to be part of a successful team. I think we’ll have a lot of similarities in that regard. You know all of my guys on GameDay are highly accomplished and highly skilled. Hopefully, I can bring something to be able to weave it in and make it a seamless unit at Wimbledon, too.
FOS: You’ve covered just about everything at ESPN, except tennis. Talk about your challenge as a rookie hosting the world’s oldest, most prestigious tennis tournament?
RD: Over the course of my career, I’ve done a lot of things that I didn’t have a deep background in. Hopefully, they went well enough. Seems that they did. I think that immersing yourself and knowing what questions to ask and also being wise enough to not try to pretend to experts that you know everything.
Roddick said to me the other day, ‘Man, if you have any questions on the tennis side of it, let me know. And if you have any insights on the TV side of it, let it rip.’ So it’s going to be great in that regard. I think what we’ll do is we will show the proper respect and reverence for Wimbledon. Because it deserves that. We will also be innovative and insightful. We’ve got some technical improvements and different things that are going to enhance the coverage of the tournament itself and the grounds. We’re going to try to let people experience it. The entire trip is something a lot of people won’t do in their lifetimes. We will try to give it to them as best we can during these two weeks.
FOS: Speaking of GameDay, what have Pat McAfee and Nick Saban added to the show?
RD: Freshness and brilliance. Pat, first of all, is the most dynamic force in sports media at the moment. The empire that he’s built is amazing. His ability to connect with crowds and with people is really unlike anything I’ve seen.
He’s brought such a jolt of enthusiasm. Not that we didn’t have enthusiasm for the show. We certainly did. But his ability to connect with people is remarkable. I think it shines through the screen. It’s certainly evident on-site. People love him. He’s been a great teammate. He has great love and admiration for the sport and the show. He’s just been tremendous.
FOS: And Saban?
RD: Nick is simply the best communicator in any venue I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen him speak to board groups. I’ve seen him speak to his team. I’ve talked to him one-on-one with him being the interview subject over the years. I’ve spoken to him as a friend. And I’ve seen him on television.
His ability to take the points he wants to make and tailor them specifically for the people who are listening so they will get the most out of it is uncanny. That dynamic and the fact that they enjoy each other, and really enjoy working with the group as a whole, has really kept it fresh.
When I say that I don’t imply it was getting stale. But the magic of GameDay, even prior to me moving in to host nearly a dozen seasons ago, they always found a way to change without losing the soul of the show. I think that’s the most important thing that Pat and Nick and their immense talent have been able to capture. They’ve been able to put their own stamp on it. Yet they’ve done so extraordinarily wisely and skillfully within the context of the show. It seems like they’ve always been there. I think that’s really a unique thing in television.
FOS: Please tell me McAfee’s Kicking Contest is not going away. That’s a fabulous bit.
RD: (Laughs). That’s Pat’s domain. You’ll have to ask Pat about that.
All I will say about it is we love it. It’s just tremendous. I told Pat a year or so ago. I said, when you first came on the show, my wife has an aunt who just turned 90, but she could pass for 60, probably. She’s a big football fan. But she wasn’t really familiar with Pat. It didn’t take long before I told him, I think she likes you better than she likes me now. A lot of it is his personality. A lot of it is the kicking contest. So that’s his domain. I’ll have to defer to him on that one.
FOS: I talked to an industry fan of yours. He says, ‘Rece Davis exudes college football.’ Your reaction?
RD: That’s very flattering to hear that. I do love it. I love that sport more than any other. I’m a huge sports fan. I’ll watch just about anything. But that’s the one I love the most.
I don’t walk into the set every week thinking, ‘Wow, how lucky am I?’ Because I don’t know that you perform your best if you think that. But I always have a deep appreciation for where I am. I have respect for the men who play the game—and the men and women who coach it. I try to show that all the time. I want the people at home to love the tradition, and the fanfare, and the little eccentricities and nuances of each place we go as much as I do. If that’s part of it, I’m very grateful to hear those words. In all honesty, that’s my goal every Saturday: to exude college football.
FOS: You’ve publicly roasted the idea of a 24-team playoff in college football. Why?
RD: I do not like it. Because we have the only regular season in sports that is still of great significance … part of the beauty of the regular season in college football is that an early-season game can hang over you for a long time.
The other thing is this is going to adversely impact scheduling. Because I’ve heard people say, ‘Well, you can go ahead and play this Texas-Ohio State game now because there’s no penalty for losing it.’ There’s also no reward for playing it now.
I acknowledge if we have a 24-team playoff, those playoff games would be great. I’ll love them and I’ll watch them. I acknowledge that a game between what would previously be also-rans in the Big Ten and the SEC might carry playoff significance. But in my judgment, the price that you pay is watering down the huge game.
I think the huge games still are the thing that make college football different from the other sports. The huge regular-season, make-or-break game that might be played in September, might be played in October. or might be played at the end of the season. They’re still of great value. I just feel like 24 is way too many. I think 12 is plenty.
FOS: So what should college football do?
RD: Probably need to iron out some of the things in the selection process. But the most important thing is they need to move another round of games on-campus.
Whatever you do, if you go to 16, or heaven forbid, if you go to 24, you’ve got to increase on-campus games. Because that’s where the atmosphere lives. That’s where the soul of college football lives… we need to not get away from that and try to make this like an NCAA basketball tournament, all neutral sites, move around the country.
Football is not that kind of tournament sport. It’s a playoff sport, like all of them are. But it’s not that type of tournament sport. We need some homefield feel. We need on-campus. We need to think about the fans and what we’re asking of them in terms of travel. We need to think about the atmosphere that would be created.
Another thing I think is the height of foolishness: These coaches and athletic directors who think it’s somehow going to save their job. No. This is a professionalized enterprise now. There are NBA coaches who get fired after making the playoffs. There are NFL coaches who get fired after making the playoffs. Same in Major League Baseball. College basketball coaches now get fired after making the tournament.
I mean, my good friend Hubert Davis got whacked. He’d been to the national championship game [coaching North Carolina] a few years ago. Sooner or later, making the playoff won’t be enough. That’s going to be just like every other professional sport. And I did say professional sport because that’s what it is. When guys are making a lot of money, coaches are making millions of dollars; it’s a professional enterprise, no matter what kind of label we try to put on it.
FOS: Name a school that GameDay has not visited you’d like to add to the schedule?
RD: That’s pretty easy. You start getting down to the Power Four schools that haven’t hosted GameDay. That usually turns out to be our wildest scene. We haven’t been to Illinois. I think if [coach Bret] Bielema can get them going, we’d probably have some type of wild scene, like we had at Cal or Washington State several years ago. They’re probably my two favorite stops that we’ve had.
FOS: Where does the Curt Cignetti/Indiana story rank for you?
RD: The most unlikely thing I’ve ever seen in college football.
I always said the greatest rebuilding job in the history of the sport was Bill Snyder at Kansas State. And it was a great rebuilding job. And Bill Snyder didn’t have the luxury of being able to bring in a portal full of people who were familiar with some system.
I don’t say that to take anything away from Cignetti. But even with that aspect of it, to take a program that was the losingest in the history of college football, really an afterthought … for him to take that, go to the playoff the first year, win it all the second year. To have just a brilliant team, to win the Heisman Trophy with a transfer quarterback, it’s the most amazing rebuild job and I think the best rebuilding job. Certainly the best turnaround in the history of the sport.
FOS: Is college football really our second-most popular sport (behind the NFL)?
RD: I think so. I think the consistent ratings on television bear it out. I think the packed stadiums across the country bear it out. I think the willingness of fans, as convoluted as this might be, to reach into their own pocket. Whether they are multi-millionaire fans donating to the NIL, or those just supporting the other ventures in order to channel a little bit of money to the players, legally I mean. It’s kind of remarkable.
It’s kind of hard to think it’s as popular as the NFL. But I don’t know if the rank-and-file Dallas Cowboys fan will say, ‘Hey, I’m going to shell out a little more money because hopefully we can get another left tackle.’ You’ll see that pretty commonly in college football. So I think, because of that, I would say it’s the second-most popular sport in the country.
