West Virginia Head Coach Rich Rodriguez took some time recently to stop by the ESPN College GameDay podcast, and made it pretty clear on which game he thinks the famous ESPN pre-game show should choose to bless with their presence this season on the weekend of September 13th.
That just happens to be the weekend this fall that Rodriguez will lead the Mountaineers into his first edition of the Backyard Brawl against Pitt since departing WVU in 2007 for the head coach opening at Michigan.
Rodriguez's final game before leaving after that season? A 13-9 loss to Pitt in the Brawl.
Now, the two programs will meet once again with Rodriguez on the sideline, and he's already stumping to bring everybody's favorite college football pre-game show to Morgantown for the 108th Backyard Brawl.
“It’ll be maybe the most electric atmosphere in college football that weekend," Rodriguez said. "I’m hoping that we’ll have GameDay down there. That would be nice. I mean, they’ll put on a show. You’ll see the blue lot cranking like you’ve never seen it before and there’s, there’ll be West Virginia fans. This place will be sold out."
“I don’t know who else is playing that weekend but there will not be one that’s more intense, you know what I mean. It’ll be quite a show.”
ESPN analysts Pete Thamel and Rece Davis seemed to agree that it'd be a great idea to do so, and even seemed excited at the prospect of potentially bringing the show to Morgantown.
"I don't think I've been to West Virginia since I've hosted the show, going into my 11th year. I've been there for basketball a couple of times," Davis said. "I've called Thursday night games there, and we were at Pitt for West Virginia-Pitt on the Thursday night a couple years ago when the season opened. I don't think I've been to West Virginia for gameday as a host, but I'm ready to go," Davis said.
If the show manages to make it to Morgantown, it would also be a bit of a homecoming for a pair of analysts now playing a prominent role on College GameDay -- former WVU star Pat McAfee and West Virginia native and one-time WVU assistant coach Nick Saban. McAfee brought his own sports talk show, The Pat McAfee Show, on the Friday ahead of West Virgina's Week One showdown with Penn State last August.
"It would be just fantastic if we could take the show back there. Might even get the boys to sing because McAfee and Saban have zero problem singing Country Roads before the show starts," Davis said.