South Carolina superfan Darius Rucker to be featured on College GameDay intro song
Darius Rucker is already a big and insanely prominent South Carolina fan, but he’s going to have a major role in college football as a whole this season.
Rucker will be one of three musicians to be featured on the new College GameDay song this season along with Lainey Wilson and The Cadillac 3.
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“Oh man, you know, I’ve watched that opening so many times,” Rucker said in a video announcing it today. “I used to sit in my room and say, ‘I got to write a song so I can do the opening of GameDay. It’s pretty amazing to get to do it. It’s pretty amazing.”
This is the first time the song introduces college football’s staple show in over a decade and a half with Big and Rich’s “Comin’ to Your City” the song for 16 seasons.
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The way College GameDay phrased its tweet it seems it’ll likely be a remake and cover of the current “Comin’ To Your City” song.
Rucker, a noted college football fan and South Carolina mega fan, will get to be part of the coverage.
It’s almost too appropriate for the song to debut Sept. 2 on that iteration of College GameDay featuring South Carolina and North Carolina in Charlotte.
The Gamecocks take on the Tar Heels at 7:30 p.m. Saturday with that the focal point of College GameDay that week. The show will be live from Romare Bearden Park in Charlotte.
Full release from South Carolina on GameDay Coming
ESPN’s College GameDay Built by The Home Depot will kick off the 2023 college football season on Saturday, Sept. 2, in Charlotte, N.C., before the South Carolina Gamecocks face the North Carolina Tar Heels in the Duke’s Mayo Classic. The three-hour show (9 a.m. ET) will be live from Romare Bearden Park in uptown Charlotte to kick off GameDay’s 37th season and 30th year of road shows, which have become synonymous with college football Saturdays over the past three decades.
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One of the premier matchups of Week 1, the ‘Battle of the Carolinas’ neutral site game between SEC and ACC rivals will be played at Bank of America Stadium in primetime on ABC (7:30 p.m.). The game location is also significant with the ACC offices now headquartered in Charlotte.
This will be College GameDay’s 440th road show all-time – and the first-ever visit to a South Carolina-North Carolina game. The Gamecock’s last GameDay appearance was 2014, while the Tar Heels appeared in 2010. This is the third trip to uptown Charlotte for College GameDay in recent years. The show also originated from Romare Bearden Park before the 2017 ACC Championship Game and the 2021 Duke’s Mayo Classic when Georgia faced Clemson in a Week 1 top-five showdown.
Rece Davis hosts the three-hour College GameDay joined by analysts Lee Corso, Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard and Pat McAfee with college football insider Pete Thamel and reporters Jen Lada and Jess Sims.
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Tickets to sit in the Gamecock section are available here.
Before this first road show of the season, College GameDay will host a two-hour preview show (10 a.m. – noon) in Week 0 from ESPN’s Bristol, Conn., studios on Saturday, August 26.
In 2022, College GameDay delivered its most-viewed college football regular season, averaging 2.1 million viewers. In all, college football’s most-watched pregame show delivered a 10% increase over the prior year and nine episodes of at least two million viewers.
