‘It was one of the goosebump weekends’: Indiana AD on College GameDay visit to Bloomington

BLOOMINGTON — Indiana football athletic director Scott Dolson didn’t get much rest over the weekend.

After the No. 13 Hoosiers matched their best-ever start at 8-0 with a 31-17 win over Washington, he traveled to Knoxville to attend the basketball team’s exhibition against Tennessee.

He shook hands with IU fans sitting courtside at Thompson-Boling Arena and went back to the locker room for a brief chat with coach Mike Woodson, but the events of the previous day were never far from his mind.

Dolson was still being inundated with texts from around the country about IU’s successful turn hosting ESPN College GameDay.

Students camped out overnight for a chance to get on camera and thousands of fans lined up on the South Lawn during the live broadcast that put the spotlight on an undefeated football team firmly in the conversation for a spot in the College Football Playoff under the program’s first-year coach Curt Cignetti.

“It was massive,” Dolson said. “You could just feel everybody come together, the whole university and community.”

It was the first time IU hosted ESPN’s flagship college football program on a Saturday. The show was on campus for the Hoosiers’ 2017 opener against Ohio State, but that game took place on a Thursday night.

“When the GameDay crew left, we wanted to make sure they couldn’t wait to come back and everybody embraced that,” Dolson said. “We wanted to make it special.”

ESPN”s College Gameday broadcasts live before the start of the Indiana versus Washington football game at Memorial Stadium on Oct. 26, 2024.

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Author : The Herald-Times

Publish date : 2024-10-30 17:43:21

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