TAMPA, Fla. — Elle Duncan remembers being impressed by Virginia Tech. Back in February of 2024, the women’s basketball edition of ESPN’s College GameDay — of which Duncan is the host of — went to Blacksburg, Virginia’s Cassell Coliseum to broadcast from an ACC venue for the first time. Thousands of Hokies’ fans showed up early to get in the door to get a spot in the crowd behind the GameDay set. They were loud, rowdy and proud, providing a worthy environment for GameDay ahead of the nationally-ranked Hokies’ matchup with the North Carolina Tar Heels.
And then, this past season, Duncan, Andraya Carter and Chiney Ogwumike went to Reynolds Coliseum on the campus of North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Duncan had to readjust her rankings of her top locations she’s done the show from.
“I think we choose very wisely where we go. N.C. State was a really great response,” Duncan told SB Nation at the Final Four. “Virginia Tech was, to me, amazing. It was nuts. Then we went to N.C. State and I was like, ‘Oh, they beat (Virginia Tech).’ They lined up even earlier.”
Fans posted up outside the historic arena the night before the game. N.C. State coach Wes Moore greeted those passionate supporters with free donuts on Sunday morning, hours before the Wolfpack upset No. 1 Notre Dame in double-overtime in front of a sold-out crowd. Before that epic game, those same fans brought an incredible energy as a backdrop to College GameDay.
“That was my favorite. Should I be saying that? I’m sorry,” Ogwumike says of N.C. State with a laugh. “But going there was awesome.”
College GameDay is one of ESPN’s iconic brands. The football version of the show began way back in 1987 and started taking its set on the road in 1993 and has transformed into the GameDay that fans are familiar with now, where Lee Corso dons a mascot head at the end of every airing. The coach is set to retire this season as GameDay turns the page with new personalities like Pat McAfee and Nick Saban as its stars.
In 2005, ESPN took the blueprint for its marquee football pregame show and applied it to men’s college basketball. Between that inaugural season of the show and 2021, GameDay took its set to a women’s basketball contest just twice: a Notre Dame at UConn clash in 2010 and a Vanderbilt at Tennessee matchup in 2011.
Finally, in 2022, the show came back to women’s college basketball, coinciding with a time in which the sport’s fandom began to boom. There was one show in 2022, three in 2023, five in 2024 and four this past season. There was supposed to be a fifth show this last year, but the game was canceled due to snow.
As the show has returned, grown and created its own loyal and fervent audience, the staples of it — Duncan, Carter and Ogwumike — have become stars in their own right and in many ways have developed into the faces of women’s basketball at ESPN.
“It’s been awesome,” Carter said. “I’m very happy that they brought us back together. We sort of got to keep the energy and carry that momentum. We’re really good friends, so it’s not like we lose touch and then have to come together and figure out this natural chemistry again. When we come back together, we have all these things that we’ve already talked about, and we have all these inside jokes that we can make, and this energy that never leaves us.”
When they’re breaking down x’s and o’s or discussing the personalities of players and coaches on the air, Duncan, Carter and Ogwumike might disagree on a few things. But when it comes to the future of the women’s college basketball adaptation of College GameDay, they all agree on one fundamental thing.
They want more.
“We’re hoping for even more, right? The hope is that we’re just going to do more of them,” Duncan says. “I definitely think that there is a desire. The sponsorship is there. So, it’s really just about logistics. But that’s always been our hope, to just try to do more, but scale in a way that makes sense.”
Carter adds: “More shows, bigger crowds, more things.”
And Ogwumike: “There’s a camaraderie within women’s basketball where we’re all uplifting each other that I feel is very special and very unique. So, the goal is to have more GameDays.”
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Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images
This season, there were 16 airings of men’s College GameDay with 10 of those coming from on-site locations. The men’s show began on Jan. 11 from ESPN’s studio in Bristol, Connecticut, while the first of four women’s shows didn’t air until Feb. 16 — a two-hour special before UConn at South Carolina tipped off in Columbia.
Hosts of the women’s rendition of College GameDay know that they don’t have much control over the schedule, but to help the sport and the show grow, they would like to see it start much earlier in the calendar.
“I’m the wrong person to ask,” Carter says with a laugh. “If you asked me, we would be somewhere the very first week. That’s not really how it works. Even with men’s GameDay, they tend to wait until football season starts to wind down, because football GameDay obviously dominates those Saturdays, as it should. But it would be great (to start earlier in the season). We get creative with our GameDays too. We’ll do ones on Thursdays.”
Carter, a former standout player at Tennessee, has worked at ESPN in various roles over the past several years. In addition to her duties as studio analyst for women’s college basketball and the WNBA, she’s been a sideline reporter for SEC football games and is also a regular on men’s College GameDay.
In addition to seeing women’s GameDay happen more often and start earlier in the season, she also hopes that it becomes more akin to the version viewers see in men’s basketball and football whereas, it’s not so much a pregame show as it is a standalone show that happens to broadcast live from the biggest game of the week.
“For a lot of times, our shows are like pregame shows, where it goes right into the game. Then there’s our traditional GameDay show that’s really early where all the fans just come for the show and there’s more fan interaction,” Carter told SB Nation. “I think moving into that space a little bit more — a show instead of a pregame show — and having fans come… Moving into that, finding more windows and also just having more shows. Obviously, as someone that does the men’s College GameDay, there are more Saturdays that we do that than there are Sundays that we do women.”
Duncan adds: “Is this a show that is better served as a pregame to a game that’s going to be on ESPN, or better served as a standalone show, like it is with the men? We’re figuring it out, but the response has been incredible.”
For example, all of the women’s GameDay shows this season led into a game that was broadcasted by one of the networks in the ESPN family, whether that was ESPN, ESPN2, ABC, the SEC Network or the ACC Network. That’s been true 12-of-13 women’s College GameDay shows since 2022, with the lone exception being made for a ranked matchup between Ohio State and Caitlin Clark’s Iowa on March 3, 2024 that aired on FOX.
Meanwhile, football’s GameDay went live last season from the locations of five games that didn’t air on ESPN platforms. The football show has always pursued the big story, no matter the conference and no matter where the game is airing.
That raises a frustration had by Ogwumike, who points out that GameDay didn’t do a show this season from Los Angeles, home to two of the top programs in the country and two of the best players. USC’s JuJu Watkins was the consensus National Player of the Year, while Lauren Betts powered UCLA to its first Final Four appearance.
“We were begging to go out to LA,” Carter says. “USC or UCLA are obviously ones that we would absolutely love to do.”
But both schools play in the Big Ten where their games are broadcast by NBC and FOX. Another argument is that Big Ten schools typically don’t play on Sundays like SEC and ACC teams do and when women’s GameDay usually airs. However, USC and UCLA played a combined seven Big Ten home games on Sundays this past season. Opportunities for GameDay to go to the City of Angels existed.
“Alright, I’m on my agenda, my little high horse now,” Ogwumike begins. “I really wish this was the year where we had Los Angeles basketball (on GameDay). I know sometimes it’s hard to figure out the logistics of getting from coast to coast, but like, to me, it’s a non-negotiable when you have JuJu Watkins, Lauren Betts… I was lobbying hard to get to the west coast, but hopefully there’s more room to grow, to help build the infrastructure so we can make those types of trips. I’m shooting my shot. I think getting to the west coast is very important.”
Since 2022, women’s GameDay has gone to seven SEC locations, four ACC games and two Big Ten games. It has yet to travel to a venue that’s home to a school in the Big East, Big Ten or Big 12, much less a mid-major conference.
“We have UConn here at the Final Four and we didn’t get to go to Storrs. That’s in (ESPN’s) backyard,” says Ogwumike, a former two-time Pac-12 Player of the Year at Stanford. “And I know we have the best execs that are trying to make the best decisions for us, but hopefully we find ways to tell those stories of athletes. Like, imagine going to see Paige in her final year? Seeing JuJu. That type of stuff would have been amazing.”
ESPN has an opportunity this fall to satisfy the appeals of the stars of GameDay. While the contest will lack Watkins — who may miss all of next season as she recovers from a tragic knee injury — USC is hosting South Carolina in what will be a must-watch matchup on Nov. 15. Dubbed “The Real SC” battle, the game will be played on a Saturday and be aired by FOX.
Is ESPN willing to step on the toes of college football — and do a west coast game broadcast by a rival — so it can have a presence on perhaps the most-anticipated non-conference women’s basketball clash of the year?
When the game was announced, Duncan says the crew emailed their bosses.
“It was like, ‘So, we’re going here then?’ That’s an earlier season matchup,” Duncan says. “But that would be an absolute dream.”
