You\u2019ll never believe this, but ESPN\u2019s College GameDay is opening the 2026 college football season with back-to-back trips to SEC country.<\/p>\n
You certainly can\u2019t blame the show for picking Baton Rouge on Sept. 5, considering it will be Lane Kiffin\u2019s first game as head coach<\/a> of the LSU Tigers.<\/p>\n As our Sam Neumann noted earlier<\/a>, while broadcast details have not been confirmed, it\u2019s difficult to envision this not being a night game with Chris Fowler\u00a0and\u00a0Kirk Herbstreit\u00a0on the call for ABC. ESPN\u2019s top announcing duo\u00a0called last year\u2019s Week 1 game<\/a>\u00a0in Clemson\u00a0after spending the morning in Columbus<\/a>\u00a0for Lee Corso\u2019s final show.<\/p>\n This will be GameDay\u2019s first game back in Baton Rouge since November 9, 2024, for an Alabama-LSU rivalry showdown.<\/p>\n It\u2019s worth noting that the Clemson-LSU game marks GameDay\u2019s 500th show on the road in its 40-year history (33 of which have included on-site broadcasts). ESPN said in a release<\/a> that additional details about that celebration will be shared.<\/p>\n College GameDay announces the first 2 stops of its 40th season!<\/p>\n \ud83c\udfc8 Sept. 5 \u2013 Clemson at LSU (500th show on the road!) More: bit.ly\/4wk0Hrf<\/p>\n [image or embed]<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 ESPN PR (@espnpr.bsky.social<\/a>) May 12, 2026 at 2:23 PM<\/a><\/p>\n The following week, GameDay will cover a familiar match as it descends on Austin, Texas, ahead of the rematch between Ohio State and Texas, kicking\u00a0off at 7:30 p.m. ET on ABC. ESPN\u2019s college football roadshow opened the 2025 season at that game last year, in which the Buckeyes throttled Arch Manning and the Longhorns. They\u2019ll absolutely be looking for payback in this Sept. 12 showdown.<\/p>\n GameDay last visited Austin on October 19, 2024, for a Texas-Georgia SEC showdown.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You\u2019ll never believe this, but ESPN\u2019s College GameDay is opening the 2026 college football season with back-to-back trips…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,10527,20682,22687,786,781,537],"class_list":["post-290503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-clemson-tigers","tag-college-gameday","tag-espn-college-gameday","tag-lsu-tigers","tag-ohio-state-buckeyes","tag-texas-longhorns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\ud83c\udfc8 Sept. 12 \u2013 Ohio State at Texas<\/p>\n