There was never a doubt where College Gameday would be on Saturday, given ESPN’s new deal with the SEC, but there were a ton of guest picker options for the Georgia-Texas SEC Championship game in Atlanta. Both schools have a number of prominent alums, but instead they opted to go with a big name with no ties to either school, as Timothée Chalamet was announced as the picker to a lot of confused reactions from fans.
Chalamet is a New Yorker who went to Columbia, so there was some skepticism about whether he’d be locked in on college football, but he laid those concerns to rest with a rather stunning performance on the Gameday desk, showing off more research and thought in his picks than we usually seen from some of the actual analysts on the desk.
Now, Chalamet clearly was aided by the research department, particularly with the smaller games like Jackson State-Southern and Ohio-Miami (OH), but even so, it was an extremely impressive performance that had a lot of folks on social media posting the Shaq “I apologize, I wasn’t familiar with your game” meme and, of course, the Dune “Lisan al-Gaib” screenshot. As Desmond Howard said after his Jackson State pick, “he really is a good actor” as he had his picks ready to go and had done his homework, but it’s fun to imagine him just being a college football sicko who loves Cam Skattebo like the rest of us.
