Just as it has seemingly all season long, ESPN College GameDay has decided to feature boring instead of a significant Bedlam showdown with Oklahoma State football in Week 13 of the 2021 regular season. GameDay will travel to Ann Arbor, Mich. to cover Ohio State for the second consecutive week.
Oklahoma State football failed to make it to College GameDay for the 2021 regular season, as the show will cover Ohio State for the second straight week.
GameDay failed to make it to the state of Montana for the first time ever to feature the annual “Brawl of the Wild” between Montana and Montana State in Week 12. GameDay preferred to cover the Ohio State-Michigan State matchup instead, which quickly turned into a rout. The Buckeyes led 49-0 in the first half of a ho-hum victory for head coach Ryan Day and his resurgent Ohio State squad.
You showed the country what makes #GrizNation so special.🐻 We can't wait to see the energy you bring on Saturday!@CollegeGameDay, we hope to see you in Missoula next year! #GoGriz pic.twitter.com/9kzBavdX7t
— Montana Grizzlies (@UMGRIZZLIES) November 15, 2021
Ohio State is College GameDay’s No. 1-featured team, which may be a culmination of the Buckeyes’ on-field success and the ties with Kirk Herbstreit, one of the show’s hosts. The Buckeyes have been featured on college football’s premier Saturday morning show 52 times since the show’s traveling inception in 1993. The next three most commonly shown teams are Alabama (50 appearances), Florida (41), and Oklahoma (39).
Oklahoma State has made it on the show nine times, and all but two of those appearances (Baylor in 2013 and Florida State in 2014) were Bedlam games.
Saturday’s game between OU and OSU is only the third occasion in which the two teams will meet both ranked as Top 10 teams. GameDay has featured the Bedlam series seven times, which is tied for the seventh-most for matchups between the same two teams. Alabama-LSU and Penn State-Ohio State lead this category with 11 GameDay shows each.
Overall, GameDay has missed the mark several times this season to feature an outside-the-box matchup or to venture far beyond the SEC/Big Ten realm. Almost every season, just one Big 12 matchup is featured in between a bevy of SEC and Big Ten games — and that’s the case in 2021, with three all-Big Ten or all-SEC matchups in addition to several other non-conference appearances. OU-Texas seems to have taken this year’s Big 12 spot.
Between 2016 to 2019, Ohio State has been featured in two or three GameDay matchups each season.
Instead of featuring a Bedlam clash that either uphold OU’s first two-year absence from the CFP or propel OSU to its first-ever CFP appearance (prior to the Big 12 title game) this fall, GameDay will feature Ohio State for the second week in a row. It seems that TV viewers don’t mind the same old thing again if it involves one of college football’s biggest ‘brand’ names.