The fight between Saturday college football pregame shows College GameDay on ESPN (established in 1987, on the road since 1993) and Big Noon Kickoff on Fox (since 2019) has taken on quite a lot of dimensions. One of the latest is about guests. And while GameDay has often taken the lead there with prominent alums each week, Big Noon has a great one for their broadcast ahead of 6-0 Indiana hosting 5-1 Nebraska Saturday. They’re bringing in one of the state of Indiana’s most famed people in musician John Mellancamp:
We have a very special guest joining the show this Saturday, Bloomington 🔥👀@JohnMellencamp will be joining Big Noon Kickoff LIVE ahead of @IndianaFootball‘s matchup with @HuskerFootball 🎉 pic.twitter.com/NHFKjBk56C
— Big Noon Kickoff (@BNKonFOX) October 18, 2024
Big Noon Kickoff will probably not be held outside a Tastee-Freez, but Mellencamp is still an amazing pull for this. He was actually born in a small town (Seymour, Indiana), and while he didn’t go to IU (his Wikipedia entry only says “Mellencamp attended Vincennes University, a two-year college in Vincennes, Indiana, starting in 1972. During this time, he abused drugs and alcohol” on his college days), he feels like quite the local figure to bring in here. And unlike Oregon alum Kaitlin Olson on GameDay last week, he doesn’t appear to have a Fox-affiliated project to promote.
There have been larger questions about Big Noon Kickoff lately, especially with GameDay‘s ratings this year (partly from the addition of Nick Saban), and especially with some of the location decisions from the two shows. But while this week certainly may not solve all of that (particularly with GameDay on site in Austin for No. 5 Georgia at No. 1 Texas, and featuring guest picker Scottie Scheffler), Big Noon Kickoff does have a notable matchup of their own (and this one, unlike some past location picks, is indeed their Big Noon Saturday game). And they seem to have landed a perfect guest for it.
[BNKonFox on X]
About Andrew Bucholtz
Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.