Smelly Little Leprechauns

Notre Dame and Georgia Tech will kickoff ABC's new Saturday night prime time coverage with an 8pm EST time kickoff on September 2nd [official story here]. This is huge for national coverage and is almost certainly a result of GT's excellent prime time showing last year with wins over Auburn and Miami in evening games. With the national spotlight firmly on Tech to begin the season (this will be the kickoff for college football as a whole, basically) it's an excellent chance to further impress the above average group of recruits that GT is getting attention from already this year - and no small factor that ND is a team that we seem to be up against almost constantly for recruits.

Georgia Tech's large number of evening games in recent years has been the butt of some good natured jokes [link], but ESPN/ABC love the atmosphere of the night games in Atlanta and it has become one of their favorite venues for broadcasting. It will be interesting to see where the Gameday crew sets up on campus, last time they were in Atlanta it wasn't exactly the best way to show off the school - hopefully Rad can get it worked out in a better location (yes, we know - urban campuses don't always have great options for this kind of thing).

(www.johnnyroadtrip.com)

Of even more interest, looking at ABC's prime time schedule for the rest of the season, one other date stands out:

• Nov. 11, 8 p.m. ET: ACC, Big 12 or BIG EAST (12-day selection)

GT will be visiting UNC at Keenan Stadium that day (a veritable house of horrors, unfortunately) and depending on both team's performance up to that point will be a candidate to be featured again in prime time. The other games for that day from the three conferences are:

• Iowa St. @ Colorado
• Wake Forest @ Florida St.
• Syracuse @ USF
• Duke @ BC
• Miami @ Maryland
• Baylor @ Ok St.
• Texas Tech @ Oklahoma
• NCSU @ Clemson
• Nebraska@ TAMU
• Cincinnati @ WVU
• Texas @ Kansas St.
• Pitt @ UConn

Of those, the only ones that look likely to be candidates for a prime time game will be Miami at Maryland, Texas Tech at Oklahoma and Nebraska at Texas A&M. In favor of a GT at UNC matchup would be the fact that UNC is going to be a solid team and will be playing a fairly weak early schedule - if they can beat VT at home they would probably be 6-2 and ranked in the top 20 the week before the @ND game (when the 12 day window will be used). That 12 day window also comes up right after Tech's homecoming game against Miami, and if Tech can pull off wins at home over ND and Miami we will be a fairly hot national name at that point (and yes, that's asking a lot).

My guess would be that this game is TT at Oklahoma, with Miami at Maryland right behind it - but keep an eye open for UNC and cheer for them to do well early in the year, national prime time games are absolutely huge for recruiting and name recognition.