Who Is Going to be The Guest Picker This Weekend On “College Gameday?” Read Here to Find Out

No. 10 Vanderbilt hosts ESPN’s “College Gameday” this weekend for the first time since 2008.

Comedian Nate Bargatze appears as a surprise guest at the end of a weekly Nateland Live show at the 100-seat Lab at Zanies comedy club Monday, April 28, 2025 in Nashville, Tenn. | Mark Zaleski / The Tennessean / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

As No. 10 Vanderbilt football prepares to host No. 15 Missouri in this weekend’s edition of “College Gameday,” the show announced who the guest picker will be.

Per an announcement on X, comedian Nate Bargatze has been selected as this week’s celebrity guest picker. Bargatze has been an outspoken celebrity and lifelong fan of Vanderbilt. His fandom of the Commodores was made known in an article posted by Vanderbilt’s student newspaper, The Vanderbilt Hustler, in 2020.

In the story, he detailed that a main reason for his fandom comes from his second cousin, Ronnie Bargatze, who coaches Vanderbilt in the 1970s and was then a color commentator for the Commodores later on. He has attended Vanderbilt games going back to the 1990s.

With Vanderbilt getting plenty of attention for its 6-1 start to the college football season, Bargatze has been one of the few celebrities that has always stuck with Vanderbilt through the highs and the lows.

Bargatze was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1975. During his career, Bargatze has gotten his fame from his standup comedy. In 2024, he was the highest-grossing standup comic. His breakthrough came in 2017 after being featured in a Netflix series on standup comedians.

This is not Bargatze’s first appearance on “College Gameday,” however. In 2023, Bargatze was the guest picker in Tuscaloosa when the show visited the campus for the matchup between LSU and Alabama. Now in 2025, the Vanderbilt superfan gets the opportunity to pick games at the school he grew up cheering for.

Vanderbilt football has had a season that very few college football fans expected. Coming off the 7-6 season, the Commodores are 6-1 and have serious hopes of making an appearance in the SEC Championship Game and a bid in the College Football Playoff. But getting there will be no easy task.

This week, Vanderbilt takes on a top-15 Missouri team that almost mirrors the Commodores offensively and defensively. Last season, Vanderbilt nearly pulled off an upset in Columbia, Missouri as the Tigers snuck away with a 30-27 victory in overtime.

Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea is looking for his first win over Missouri during his tenure at the helm of the ‘Dores. Vanderbilt comes into the matchup as a 2.5-point favorite over Missouri. The winner moves to 7-1 and has seemingly an inside track to the playoffs, while the loser drops to 6-2 and is left with the pressure of more than likely needing to win out to make the 12-team bracket.

“College Gameday” is set to begin at 8 a.m. CT Saturday on ESPN before Vanderbilt and Missouri square off at 2:30 p.m. CT on ABC.