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Sport in Seriousness
Each week, ESPN’s College GameDay travels to a different college town to analyze the biggest stories and games in college football.
Yet through all of this, one thing has remained constant over the past two decades: It is not Rece Davis, Lee Corso, Kirk Herbstreit and now Nick Saban who appear on the GameDay desk every week.
That would be good old Crimson.
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Since its debut in Texas in 2003, the Washington State flag has become a staple of College GameDay and is one of the most coveted items fans look for on television or in person at GameDay week after week.
And as Ol’ Crimson prepares for its 306th flight over “College GameDay” on Saturday, curiosity about the story behind it and how it became a recognizable character has renewed.
Learn more about Ol’ Crimson’s background here.
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Which school does the Ol’ Crimson College GameDay flag represent?
In case you haven’t guessed, Ol’ Crimson is the flag of Washington State. The colors of the Cougars, who are only one of two remaining teams in the Pac-12, are crimson and gray, hence the nickname “Ol’ Crimson.”
Ol’ Crimson ‘GameDay’ Series
This Saturday’s College GameDay in South Carolina before the Gamecocks’ SEC home game against No. 17 LSU will be the 306th consecutive GameDay appearance for Ol’ Crimson. His first appearance was on Oct. 4, 2003, when GameDay was at Texas-Kansas State, but that winning streak didn’t begin until Oct. 18 in Madison, Wisconsin, when Wisconsin faced Purdue.
“You always turn around, at least I do, and look at the crowd and take it all in because you never want to get the idea that all the backgrounds are the same. It was so random to see a crimson Washington state flag flying (there),” former “GameDay” host Chris Fowler said in a “College GameDay” flashback episode in 2021. “We weren’t even near Pullman, Washington, at the time.”
Here’s a look at Ol’ Crimson’s high in Dublin in week one as College GameDay held its first-ever international showcase ahead of Florida State-Georgia Tech in the Aer Lingus College Football Classic.
History of the Ol’ Crimson Flag at College GameDay
College football is one of the most tradition-based sports in the college sports year.
And so Ol’ Crimson started at College GameDay.
As noted on the website, raising Ol’ Crimson started as a “school pride” and “spirit” thing, but evolved into a campaign and movement to get ESPN to bring “GameDay” to Washington State. It took 15 years for ESPN to bring “GameDay” to Pullman, Washington – which happened in Week 8 of the 2018 college football season.
Tom Pounds is considered the “Godfather” of Ol’ Crimson on GameDay. Pounds graduated from Washington State University in 1981.
“I happened to be in Austin, Texas. I’m 6-foot-4 in my shoes,” Pounds said on ESPN’s “GameDay.” “I got a lot of funny looks and I raised the flag. That’s how it started.”
So since Pounds is the godfather behind Ol’ Crimson, does he travel to GameDay every week? No, not necessarily. If he did, he’d be racking up a lot of airline miles.
According to its website, the Ol’ Crimson Booster Club is the organization that finds a way to bring Ol’ Crimson to the College GameDay site each week. Each week, the Booster Club, led by Pounds and Cameron McCoy, sends the flag set via FedEx to a Washington State alumnus or fan near that week’s GameDay site.
“When ESPN announces the location of the next CGD show, the coordinators (WSU’s Class of 1998 class of Tom Pounds and CJ McCoy) will email and call the people on the list in the region/city where the show will air. If one of the alumni or fans responds, the flag set will be sent from the location it was the previous Saturday to the location it will be the following Saturday,” the website states.
Ol’ Crimson has become such a character on GameDay each week that ESPN made a TV commercial for GameDay in 2022 centered around Ol’ Crimson and Pounds.
Has College GameDay ever been to Washington State?
Yes, GameDay has been to Pullman, Washington, once in its history, on October 20, 2018, against No. 12 Oregon.
As expected, the attendance at GameDay this week in Pullman was so high that Washington State declared a state of emergency to ensure there were enough security guards and police officers on site to help with crowd control.
“I think I had a few tears in my eyes,” Pounds told KREM2, a CBS affiliate in Spokane, Washington, in 2018 about how he felt when he learned “GameDay” was going to WSU. “I actually got a message from one of the ESPN producers, and all he said was, ‘Hey Tom, go to Twitter right now and check.’ It took me about five seconds to realize this is really happening.”
Here’s a look at the crowd in Pullman with the Ol’ Crimson Rockets flying welcoming the GameDay bus to town.
The Cougars appeared on “GameDay” two more times: at the 1988 Rose Bowl against No. 1 Michigan and in 2002 against No. 6 Ohio State in Columbus, Ohio.
How to watch College GameDay
You can watch “College GameDay” weekly on ESPN throughout the college football season. You can also stream “College GameDay” on the ESPN app by logging in with your TV provider’s credentials, through ESPN+, or through Fubo, which carries the ESPN family of networks and offers a free trial to new subscribers.
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