The Battle at Bristol between No. 17 Tennessee and Virginia Tech is set to break attendance records this weekend, as 150,000 people are expected to show up to the racetrack-turned-football field.
ESPN's College GameDay will be on scene for the build-up to the game, and they are sparing no expense with their guest picker this week. The GameDay crew is bringing on Dale Earnhardt Jr., objectively the most popular driver in NASCAR.
"That's a home run," show producer Jim Gaiero said of having Earnhardt as the picker. "The best college football game is never really near the NASCAR community, whether it's Charlotte or wherever the race is that week. They never seem to coincide. This is the perfect storm. And unfortunately with Junior's condition, he has the time off.
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He's a huge football fan, too, so he's fired up about this."
Earnhardt recently announced that he is sitting out the rest of the NASCAR season to deal with symptoms from a concussion suffered back in a June 12 crash at Michigan International Speedway. As the show producer mentioned in the quote above, it's unfortunate about the circumstances of why Earnhardt is available, but it will be fun to have him on nonetheless.
