After years of missed opportunities, GameDay's first visit to Iowa City in two decades will be a full-circle moment.
The drought is over.
For the first time in 20 years, ESPN's hit pregame show College GameDay is coming to Iowa City, the program announced Sunday morning. Iowa's (4-0) massive showdown against No. 7 Ohio State (3-1) at Kinnick Stadium on Saturday afternoon (2:30 p.m., CBS).
GameDay's long-awaited return to Eastern Iowa will be a bit of a full-circle moment for Hawkeye fans.
Why? Because the show's last visit on Sept. 30, 2006 featured the exact same matchup we're going to see this weekend. Led by eventual Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Troy Smith and a loaded supporting cast, the top-ranked Buckeyes came to Iowa City for a key early-season matchup against Drew Tate and the 13th-ranked Hawkeyes.
The game was expected to be a clash between two Big Ten and national championship contenders, but it certainly didn't play out that way.
Ohio State scored early and often en route to a 38-17 win in front of a raucous, capacity crowd at Kinnick Stadium and ran the table all the way to the BCS title game, where it was defeated by Florida. The pregame buildup turned out to be the best moment of Iowa's 2006 season, as it would falter and finish 6-7 overall.
Two decades later, and the anticipation for Saturday's battle is just as high. The Buckeyes remain a national title favorite despite blowing a 20-point fourth to Texas on Sept. 12 (they ironically played at Texas in 2006 as well), while Iowa looks to keep the momentum going toward a potential College Football Playoff chase after a dramatic win over Michigan last weekend.
The buzz for GameDay's arrival is well-warranted, but I can't help but think of one thing: how in the world has it been two decades since its last visit? The recency bias of basically visiting SEC campuses each week because of ESPN's media rights contract with the league makes sense, but let's go back to the era before TV contracts dictated how the sport is covered.
Iowa's had plenty of good teams since 2006, but for one reason or another, it just couldn't convince GameDay to come to town. It didn't help that the Hawkeyes' best teams in this stretch (2009, 2015) didn't offer a marquee matchup that was worthy of bringing the program to Iowa City, but ESPN had no problem featuring Iowa when it was on the road (at Iowa State in 2019 and 2021) or playing at a neutral site (2015 Big Ten Championship against Michigan State).
ESPN has always given the Hawkeye program respect (especially longtime GameDay analyst Kirk Herbstreit), so most of the misses can be chalked up as unfortunate breaks for Iowa. But despite all of these scheduling factors, Iowa fans can agree the show missed out on two obvious chances to come to Iowa City in this 20-year period.
Both misses ironically came against Penn State. GameDay seemed like a near-lock to return in 2017 when Saquon Barkley and No. 3 Penn State rolled into Iowa City, but the show instead opted for a special broadcast from Times Square in New York City for the first and only time to date. Penn State alumnus Keegan Michael-Key was the guest picker that day.
The opportunity presented itself four years later when No. 3 Iowa and No. 4 Penn State met in Iowa City, but GameDay decided to punt on the marquee Big Ten showdown for another visit to Dallas for the Red River Showdown between No. 21 Texas and No. 6 Oklahoma - a place they'd been to six times at that point.
But all of these misses are in the past. It's far from the same product that it used to be, but GameDay paying a visit to Iowa City is far from a negative. It gives Kirk Ferentz's program some national attention, as well as positive branding for the University of Iowa and its nationally-recognized hospitals.
Long story short, it's about time GameDay came back to Iowa City.
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HawkeyeRoundtable publisher Brad Schultz has covered the Iowa Hawkeyes since 2023. To send him story ideas, scoops, or criticize his writing, reach him at [email protected]
