College GameDay’s Athens trip proves it’s a college football Mecca

Love it or hate it, it is almost always a good decision for ESPN College GameDay to make its way to The Classic City. To be quite frank, it is easy. Georgia is a national power with one of the best fanbases in the country. While ESPN has become increasingly SEC and ACC-centric in recent years, you do not see Big Noon Kickoff coming to a city without Big Ten or Big 12 ties. The shows serve their purpose...

But with that in mind, ESPN knows how to pick them. Georgia played host to College GameDay last week with the then-No. 5 Ole Miss Rebels coming to town to take on the then-No. 9 Bulldogs. Georgia won an exciting shootout 43-35 to improve to 6-1 on the season and 4-1 in SEC play. The mid-afternoon kick was incredible, but we do need to pay attention to what the pre-game show pulled in.

ESPN PR shared out the following information regarding last week's episode of College GameDay.

Last Saturday's episode was the fourth most watched ever. Nielsen had it pulling in 2.7 million viewers from 9:00 a.m. ET to 12:00 p.m. ET, including a 3.6 million viewer spike in the final hour. This was the second-best mark to date. It beat the competition (Big Noon Kickoff) by 205 percent. To add it in perspective, the 2.7 million viewers mark throughout the duration beat out the Texas game in Austin.

With the second-largest female viewing audience to date, there is just something about UGA on TV...

Georgia simply does College GameDay better than most other schools

There may be other reasons for this. One could argue Kirby Smart taking on his friend and former Alabama colleague Lane Kiffin's team added a bit of intrigue to the set. Not to say Jelly Roll really moved the needle as a guest picker, but he may have more crossover college football fans than we realized. In short, a unique conference matchup of two top-10 teams is probably why this resonated.

But there has to be more to this, right? One could argue Georgia has a few things going for it other programs do not. One, win or lose, the fan base shows up. The only other fan base in the state that does this are the Atlanta Braves. Both teams can be mediocre and the fans will still show up in droves. The second is Myers Quad is a great place for College GameDay. It is on campus and it is spectacular.

Two other contributing factors stand out. Athens is the best college town in America, and it is not even close. That seems to be reflected with how great of a draw College GameDay pulls every time it goes there. You cannot fake the good vibes coming out of The Classic City. One final one might be the on-campus nature of Sanford Stadium. People do not have to travel that far to watch it all unfold.

To attempt to tie a bow on this, there might be two other things at play here that is somewhat in ESPN's control, or favor. Having James Franklin come on the show days after getting fired at Penn State was a brilliant tactic. The other is even though not everyone is a fan of Pat McAfee, he seems to be gaining popularity because he is not Dave Portnoy. El Presidente has not cut through for Big Noon.

It is a combination of things at play, but it is cities like Athens that can make College GameDay pop.