One big question a lot of college football fans have at the beginning of each season is when, if any weekend, will ESPN's College GameDay feature their team with a visit. There are so few trips every season that it's difficult to determine when a school might host the popular set.
It has been 30 years since ESPN began the Saturday tradition of going around to a different campus every weekend ahead of that weekend's biggest games. The first trip the set made to Blacksburg was on Oct. 16, 1999. It was a matchup between the fourth-ranked Hokies and 16th-ranked Syracuse for Homecoming Weekend. Chris Fowler, Lee Corso, and Kirk Herbstreit were inside Lane Stadium hours before kickoff.
Virginia Tech went on to win the game, 62-0. Corso's headgear pick was the Hokies. All was good in Blacksburg. Fowler recently went on the Rich Eisen podcast and discussed College GameDay and its history. He dropped a quote about Frank Beamer, GameDay, and Virginia Tech.
Chris Fowler discusses Virginia Tech and College GameDay under Frank Beamer
When Beamer was in charge, GameDay visited Blacksburg five times. Fowler didn't beat around the bush what Beamer used College GameDay visits for.
"We realized that the energy of this sport (college football), which I think is the best-suited sport for an on-site pregame show, we thought was pretty cool,'' Fowler said. "Then it was Virginia Tech, Frank Beamer, you know, figuring out this is an infomerical for our program. They may have broken our program. This is an opportunity that we're not going to let go. We're going to get every student out there for the pregame show, and we're going to fill up Lane Stadium, and we're going to make it obvious that Virginia Tech was the coolest place to be on a Saturday morning. The smart coaches figured out how to use this.''
Right after he was fired at Penn State, James Franklin went on College GameDay last fall and made it known that he wanted to coach and coach again soon. He settled on Blacksburg, and you have to think it's only going to be a natter of time that College GameDay will be back at Lane Stadium. It might not be in 2026, but don't be surprised if it's in 2027 at the latest. Just like Beamer, Franklin still uses it the same way, as Beamer, to promote the Hokies program. The time is coming.
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