How in God's Name Did Katy Perry End Up on ESPN's College Gameday?

By Craig Wack | Celebrity | October 4, 2014 |

By Craig Wack | Celebrity | October 4, 2014 |

For those who woke up bright and early on Saturday morning expecting cartoons (sorry about that), but got an eyeful of pop tart songstress Katy Perry on the set of ESPN staple College GameDay instead might be a little confused about why she was there and what the hell she was doing on stage.

First a little background, like Caine in Kung Fu, GameDay wanders from campus to campus to do their show live from the site of the hottest game of the week. Ole Miss’ tailgate area, The Grove, has long been hailed as college football’s pregame-party nirvana. The atmosphere of the students in their best party clothes, chandeliers in Easy-Up tents and the fog of barbecue smoke rustling the leaves, the tailgate party has usually been the highlight of the day on fall Saturdays in Oxford, Miss.

This year is a different story, Ole Miss and Alabama were both unbeaten and highly ranked this week, so it was the perfect opportunity for GameDay to roll to Oxford for the first time ever. So where does Perry, a “California Gurl,” fit into all this?

For the past few years, GameDay features a celebrity that helps pick games during the show’s final segment. Instead of going with local writers John Grisham or Wright Thompson or even actress Joey Lauren Adams, Perry was picked. Why you may ask? Believe it or not, she was going to be there anyway watching her first college football game. Perry’s manager, Bradford Cobb, and mentor, Glen Ballard, have Ole Miss connections and have no doubt been talking up the Ole Miss football experience to Perry for years. It just so happened that Perry’s Prismatic World Tour had an off day before going a couple of hours up the road to resume the tour in Memphis on Sunday.

A quick Twitter invite from analyst Kirk Herbstreit later and the deal was done.

HELL YEAH! DAMN RIGHT! @KirkHerbstreit @CollegeGameDay #HOTTYTODDY

— KATY PERRY (@katyperry) October 2, 2014

And here she is making predictions. If you’re curious, she actually picked Ole Miss to upset number one Alabama today, and she was right.

Craig Wack is a veteran journalist. Follow him on Twitter.