(Updated on Oct. 25 12:45 p.m.)
This week, ESPN is turning to men who have made their living luring ducks to make a call about whether Tigers will beat Rebels in Death Valley on a Louisiana Saturday night.
College GameDay’s road show has set up shop on the Parade Grounds at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. There, Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit, Dave Pollack, Desmond Howard and Lee Corso will be joined by Willie Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame (pictured with Mike the Tiger) and his brother Jase as the guest pickers, with the No. 24 Bayou Bengals hosting No. 3 Ole Miss on ESPN at 7 p.m. (ET).
In past stops at Baton Rouge, GameDay went Tiger with LSU athletes Olympian LoLo Jones and The Beard, pitcher Brian Wilson, sharing their pigskin predictions.
Instead on Oct. 25, GameDay is playing the home state card. Robertson was born in Bernice, graduated from The University of Louisiana at Monroe and lives in West Monroe . He’s CEO of Duck Commander, the Robertson family’s duck call and outdoor business. Jase is COO of Duck Commander and is credited with creating its triple threat call.
Perhaps GameDay would have earned more gridiron credibility if the picks were made by Willie and Jase's father, Phil, the inventor of the patented duck call and founder of the multimillion dollar Duck Commander enterprise. He also played quarterback ahead of one Terry Bradshaw at Louisiana Tech back in the day. Phil Robertson, though, totes a certain amount of baggage in the wake of the anti-homosexual remarks he made in a GQ magazine interview that resulted in A&E briefly suspending the Duck Dynasty leader.
Of course, none of the Robertsons has the current appeal or perkiness of Katy Perry, who was GameDay’s guest picker during the pregame show's visit to The Grove in Oxford, Miss. on Oct. 4, when the pop star presciently prognosticated that Ole Miss would top Alabama.
Perry, though, was not embraced so readily in Baton Rouge, though. Three weeks ago, her message to LSU fans was let them eat corndogs as she picked the Auburn Tigers over the ones favored on the bayou. There were any number of signs in the crowd that depicted the foodstuff in the singer's mouth. For his part, Willie pointed out on GameDay that corn dogs are not widely construed to be among Louisiana's culinary delights.
For the record, the GameDay guys and the guest pickers picked LSU to geaux over Mississippi.
