FanNation | The 10 Spot | GameDay at Williams: Worlds colliding

6 months ago

Williams College athletic director Harry Sheehy was watching the school's undefeated women's soccer team win its conference championship two Sundays ago when his cell phone rang on the sidelines. When he answered, a man identifying himself as an ESPN producer asked if Williams would be "interested" in hosting College GameDay for last Saturday's Homecoming battle with archrival Amherst.

"Come on," a dubious Sheehy asked. "Who is this?"

It was a fair question. College GameDay is a show for the big boys of Division I, not a school that doesn't even charge admission for football games. Plus Williams folks (and yes, I am one) figured the four-letter network would never darken the extreme northwestern corner of Massachusetts again after ESPN2 aired the '95 Williams-Amherst showdown in Williamstown, which degenerated into a 0-0 tie thanks to the muddy quagmire that was Weston Field.

Fortunately, memories fade. College GameDay, which travels on location to a different campus each week, had been looking for a chance to celebrate Division III football. With no marquee matchups in Division I (Georgia-Auburn and USC-Cal were the best of a so-so slate), the 150^th road edition of the show seemed the best weekend to sneak it in.

"This is a big rivalry with a real purity to it," said GameDay host Chris Fowler. "We felt this was the right place and the right time to feature Division III."

Thus came Chris, Lee (Corso) and Kirk (Herbstreit) to the Purple Valley to shoot their show before a presumably bemused national audience wondering what the heck an Eph was and why anybody was talking about it when Ohio State had a big game to play. It's believed to be the first GameDay episode in which Corso opened by waxing eloquent about seeing a "signed" Rembrandt at Williamstown's Clark Art Museum, as if Rembrandt was some sports star handing out autographs.

Even the unflappable Fowler made a brief slip when he told the audience that Amherst had not won on Weston Field since 1885. That certainly felt right to me, though in fact the Lord Jeffs' Williamstown skid extends only to 1985. "I had ‘18' on the brain for so many dates," explained Fowler of his prep work on a series that dates to 1884.

Of course, Chris, Lee and Kirk could be forgiven if they had a mild case of the bends after stepping down from the big time to the Little Three (Williams, Amherst and Wesleyan). Fowler, for example, had never seen a college football game below Division I until Saturday.

Williams students, alums and Williamstown residents certainly did their best to make sure ESPN didn't regret its first foray into Division III. They eagerly crafted mocking signs to wave behind the set just like they do in Florida's Swamp or the Big House.

Actually, some of the signs would have fit right in at the Swamp since they were taunting Georgia fans, many of whom were disappointed not to have GameDay in Athens -- and even more disappointed that it was going to some tiny school they had never heard of. That was the motivation behind "U R Still Gooder than Amherst," with the "U-G-A" in Georgia crimson, or "Georgia has ESPNvy."

The schmaltz was dutifully applied, but after all that is the only logical way to sell Williams-Amherst to a national audience. Since NESCAC schools do not compete in the football playoffs, this was going to be the eighth and final game for these teams. None of the seniors are going to play in the NFL. This would be it for their football careers, one last chance to beat their archrival.

"These guys will play each other hard on the field today," said Williams president Morton Schapiro, "and next year they'll be working next to each other at Teach for America or Goldman Sachs, or sitting next to each other at law school or med school. That is what Division III sports is about."

Still, the GameDay crew struck just the right notes, sprinkling in just enough Williams-Amherst talk and footage to give their audience a brief glimpse of something new and different while spending the bulk of the show talking about the SEC and Big XII matchups that the viewers had tuned in to hear about. In the end, certainly, the games are the thing.

That was the case for the Williams crowd as well, even if the GameDay set was all but dismantled by halftime of the Ephs' dominating 20-0 shutout win in the 122^nd meeting of the Biggest Little Game of America, our brief brush with the national spotlight quickly faded to black. Herbstreit had to leave immediately after the show to cover Kansas-Oklahoma State that night, but Corso and Fowler each prowled the sidelines to watch the Ephs hold the Lord Jeffs to a mere 146 total yards.

When Williams clinched its victory, the entire team took "The Walk." That entails strolling in full uniform down Spring Street to St. Pierre's Barber Shop, where the players smoked victory cigars, sang the fight song and shaved odd designs into the heads of the freshmen. It is a ritual reserved only for victorious Homecoming games. Saturday marked the first time it was joined by a national broadcaster, as Fowler walked along with the team.

College GameDay will be back to an 80,000-seat-plus Division I stadium next week and for the foreseeable future. And Williams will go back to being sleepy old Williams, a place where students fork over $45,000 a year for a great education in a beautiful rural setting, churning out alums that will plug it relentlessly if they're ever foolishly handed a blog on a national sports Web site. (Note to editors: Just kidding about that last part. Mostly.)

But for one crisp, late fall day, those two very different worlds intersected. At least this time, one of the teams scored. Better yet, it was the right one.

Comments (47)

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Time to see what Mark G's reaction will be...

Midvalley | 11/12/07, 10:34 AM

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