NDSU Director of Athletics Gene Taylor Discusses College GameDay’s Visit to Fargo [AUDIO]

This past weekend, ESPN announced that the College GameDay crew would be making their way to North Dakota this Saturday, to cover the game between the North Dakota State Bison and the Delaware State Hornets.

I spoke to NDSU Director of Athletics Gene Taylor earlier today and asked why ESPN decided to come to Fargo now. Taylor said:

Well, you know, we've obviously had an opportunity to meet with the folks from ESPN. They started talking about coming to Fargo, actually before the season started from what I understand, and part of it was, this weekend, if you look at the makeup of games of college football, there's not any really marquee matchups like an Alabama/A&M. They have chosen some other places. I think the fact we were back-to-back National Champions and then with our win over Kansas State, I think it really solidified their idea of moving forward with us being the site. So, a lot of things fell into place, quite frankly, and we're very, very excited and very, very happy to host them. It'll be a lot of fun.

When I asked what the exposure from College GameDay was going to mean for NDSU, Taylor said:

Well, ya know, I think it's just amazing that you're going to have three hours of broadcast live on Saturday, with some intermittent jump-ins on Friday. You can't really put a price-tag on that. I've think there's been some marketing studies that say its worth as much as $10-12 million. I'm not really sure that those numbers are fact but I'm sure that it's very, very valuable. They're going to talk about NDSU, they're clearly going to talk about our athletic program. I think FCS football will be a winner because they'll talk a great deal about the makeup of FCS football and the two championships so that's going to be a real positive for our university. It's also a real positive for our community and state, as well. I think they'll highlight the state and they're going to highlight the city of Fargo and all of that is going to be a real plus. Like you said, they don't do it very often so we want to take full advantage of everything we can while they're here.

You can hear my full interview with NDSU Director of Athletics Gene Taylor below: