College Football 2011: ESPN Names First 3 College GameDay Sites

ESPN's College GameDay is entering its 25th season on the air on Labor Day weekend, and the venerable pregame show announced this morning the first three sites where Chris Fowler, Lee Corso, Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard and Erin Andrews will be stationed.

The opening week of the season finds the crew in Arlington, Texas, for the game on Saturday, Sept. 3, at Cowboys Stadium between No. 3 Oregon and No. 4 LSU—a critical early-season matchup between two national championship contenders.

The set will be located outside the stadium.

It's back to campus sites for Week 2 and Week 3, as GameDay travels to Ann Arbor, Mich., on Saturday, Sept. 10, for the Michigan-Notre Dame game. Not only is the contest one of the great rivalry games in the country, but this one has a twist—the first-ever night game in the history of Michigan Stadium. Kickoff on ESPN is at 8:00 p.m.

Week 3 finds the crew in Tallahassee, Fla., for yet another huge early-season game—No. 1 Oklahoma at No. 5 Florida State. The Sooners have virtually everybody back from last year's Fiesta Bowl champion team, while the Seminoles, under second-year coach Jimbo Fisher, are highly thought of and appear to be back on college football's radar.

Future sites for GameDay beyond the first three weeks will be determined by the importance of that week's matchup.

ESPN also announced that, in celebration of Corso's 25th season with College GameDay, the show will take a weekly look back at his top mascot headgear moments.

The network said that the 2010 College GameDay season was the most-viewed season among viewers for the show, averaging 2,062,000. The viewer ratings were up one percent from 2009 and 11 percent from 2008.