ESPN's "College GameDay" found such success in Utah and the Big 12 Conference that it is returning for a second consecutive week. GameDay heads to Salt Lake City for the Utah Utes vs. Houston Cougars on Saturday, Oct. 24. Last week, the show attended BYU's game against Notre Dame, which didn't disappoint, as it came down to a final play in the end zone.
Back-to-back weeks on a Big 12 campus are huge for a conference that so often plays second fiddle to the SEC and Big Ten. The show at BYU's campus averaged 3 million viewers, the season's most-watched episode and the third most-watched regular-season episode ever.
In recent years, GameDay has shown an SEC bias, prioritizing those conference matchups over the Big 12, ACC and even the Big Ten. Based
on last week's viewership numbers in Provo, spreading out beyond just a handful of campuses is the way to go.
The Houston-Utah game is a ranked Big 12 matchup with significant implications for the conference title race. Utah (6-0, 3-0 Big 12) and Houston (6-1, 3-1 Big 12) are two of the conference's top four teams, along with BYU and Texas Tech. Multiple Big 12 teams have a realistic path to the College Football Playoff.
GameDay picked the weekend's highest-ranked matchup, while other games like Indiana at Michigan, Ole Miss at Texas, Texas A&M at Alabama and USC at Wisconsin lost their luster after several teams fell in the past few weeks.
Over eight weeks, GameDay has visited two Big 12 campuses, one Big Ten campus, five SEC campuses and zero ACC campuses.
College GameDay's 2026 locations
- Week 1: Clemson at LSU (Baton Rouge, Louisiana)
- Week 2: Ohio State at Texas (Austin, Texas)
- Week 3: LSU at Ole Miss (Oxford, Mississippi)
- Week 4: Texas at Tennessee (Knoxville, Tennessee)
- Week 5: Ohio State at Iowa (Iowa City, Iowa)
- Week 6: Georgia at Alabama (Tuscaloosa, Alabama)
- Week 7: Notre Dame at BYU (Provo, Utah)
- Week 8: Houston at Utah (Salt Lake City, Utah)
GameDay Week 8 location
We liked the Beehive State so much that we’re sticking around!
— College GameDay (@CollegeGameDay) October 18, 2026
Next stop is Salt Lake to see the Utes put the nation’s longest win streak on the line in a top-20 showdown with Houston 🙌 pic.twitter.com/U3Qbil9ftK
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This article originally appeared on Buffaloes Wire: ESPN's 'College GameDay' remains in the Big 12 for ranked Week 8 game
