Peeling back the curtain as ESPN College GameDay comes to Utah for showdown vs. Oregon

SALT LAKE CITY — At 10:38 a.m. Sunday morning, @CollegeGameDay fired off a tweet announcing that ESPN's iconic Saturday morning college football pregame show would air this week from the University of Utah.

The general public may have found out then, but the people around campus in charge of making sure the three-hour show goes off without a hitch got the official word around that time, as well.

However, that doesn't mean that some level of planning wasn't already in the works before Sunday morning.

In the weeks leading up to 13th-ranked Utah's showdown with No. 8 Oregon (1:30 p.m MDT, FOX), Utah received what associate athletics director for facilities, operations and capital projects Gavin Gough referred to as a prep letter.

At its core, the prep letter is ESPN notifying a school that there is potential for GameDay to show up there in the near future. Such a possibility is, of course, based on what the schedule in the coming weeks looks like and how attractive a matchup might be, at least on paper.

"In previous years they've done it, even years that we haven't hosted we've received this prep letter," Gough told KSL.com Tuesday during a phone interview. "This is a well-oiled machine, what, 37 years of College GameDay, right? They know what they're doing.

"It's similar to a TV production of our football games at Rice-Eccles Stadium, where they've got a whole packet of all the information that the host needs. We're very, very seasoned when it comes to those games at the stadium, and so, yes, we receive a little bit of notification by receiving that prep letter."

If one had looked at Saturday's college football schedule a week ago, they might have decided that if Utah were to beat USC over the weekend, then Utah-Oregon, a matchup of one-loss Power Five teams with conference and even, one might argue, national championship implications, becomes the most-attractive game of the weekend, and thus a prime option for GameDay's latest stop.

Such a notion was not lost on Gough. ESPN does not share with the campus operations side ahead of time exactly which games it is considering, but Gough has been doing this long enough to know that the prep letter is an indication that it's possible. That heads up means he and a campus-wide cast of dozens can at least do some early planning.

"We started earlier in the week, last week, looking at the potential," Gough said. "As the week went on, putting the pieces together, and really bringing everyone together in the planning group on Friday. We had a very large Zoom with about 75 people from all across campus. We tell them what we know, which is we don't know, but we know there is a possibility."

That Zoom call the day before the Utah-USC game ended with everyone involved starting to put some plans in place, so if Sunday did come with an announcement, at least the core planning was already finished and everyone could plow forward.

Utah beat USC 34-32, making Utah-Oregon the obvious GameDay pick, save for anyone arguing, albeit rationally, that No. 6 unbeaten Oklahoma's trip to Kansas was worthy. By the time the @CollegeGameDay tweet came Sunday morning, plans were all but set, and Gough, a veteran of two other successful GameDay broadcasts in 2015 and 2016, didn't need to reinvent the wheel.

The weekend's festivities will originate from Presidents' Circle, which houses the four original buildings — now known as the John Widtsoe Building, the LeRoy Cowles Building, the Alfred Emery Building, and the James Talmage Building — from when the school moved to its current location in 1900.

Presidents' Circle was the GameDay site in 2015 and 2016, after Utah hosted the show in 2004 and 2005 from right outside Rice-Eccles Stadium.

"From an ideal standpoint, it's just a lot of great open space in that footprint," Gough said. "We were at Presidents' Circle in 2015 and 2016, but the footprint has grown, the show has grown. Presidents' Circle is just ideal for the amount of open space to be able to allow them to have all the space they need to have this production. It's picturesque, it's a great, beautiful part of campus, so we have an amazing opportunity to highlight that as being the shot that everyone sees."

Gough alluding to GameDay having grown doesn't just apply to the show itself. Presidents' Circle will also be the site Friday of several ESPN functions, including The Pat McAfee Show, College Football Live, and a handful of SportsCenter hits that include GameDay personalities Rece Davis, Desmond Howard and Pete Thamel.

Additionally, per a Utah athletic department spokesperson, Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham will appear on The Pat McAfee Show Friday at 12:30 p.m. MDT, and on College GameDay at 8 a.m. MDT.

GameDay crew members were slated to roll into Salt Lake City Wednesday, with the bulk of the set building at Presidents' Circle to take place Thursday.

By the time Friday morning rolls around, it will look like it took no effort at all to set up, but Gough knows different.

"There's little things here and there about the sort of spaces that ESPN needs," Gough said in relation to any tweaks there may be compared to 2015 and 2016. "It's not just them showing up and parking. They need a lot of different things, and so we've made some adjustments here and there with parking, and where their compound is located, where some of the catering areas are, but really nothing that's noteworthy. It went really, really smooth in '15 to '16, and we're just kind of keeping that going."

Access to the College GameDay pit will open at 5 a.m. MDT, with the broadcast set to begin at its traditional time of 7 a.m. MDT. All pertinent GameDay information, including parking, can be found here.

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