NORMAN — Oklahoma legend Trae Young will be the guest picker for ESPN's College GameDay this weekend when the show broadcasts from Norman ahead of Saturday's top-20 tilt between No. 18 Oklahoma and No. 15 Michigan.
College GameDay revealed Young as its guest picker Thursday afternoon on social media. With a video featuring Young, the Atlanta Hawks point guard and former Oklahoma All-American.
"Excited to welcome y'all to my hometown, my home city of Norman, Oklahoma, and be this weekend's celebrity guest picker on College GameDay," Young said in the video. "Just a week after Lee Corso decided to hang it up, we got that team from up north coming down here, and I'm not worried at all. I'm ready to set the tone. I know Sooners fans are ready to set the tone. So, we know what we got to do. Boomer [expletive] Sooner!"
Young, who graduated from Norman North High, played basketball for Oklahoma during the 2017-18 season, when he was named the Big 12 Freshman of the Year, a consensus All-American and the national Freshman of the Year. He led the country in scoring and assists that season, averaging 27.4 points and 8.7 assists per game while leading the Sooners to an 18-14 mark and NCAA Tournament berth.
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He was selected fifth overall in the 2018 NBA Draft and has since become a four-time All-Star. Earlier this year, Young was also named the assistant general manager for Oklahoma's men's basketball team under head coach Porter Moser.
Saturday will mark Young's second appearance as guest picker on ESPN's flagship college football pregame show. He last appeared in 2020 prior to that year's Bedlam game between Oklahoma and Oklahoma State in Norman. Young is 8-2 all-time with his College GameDay picks.
The decision to have Young serve as celebrity guest picker is a more traditional option than when the program was last in Norman. Ahead of Oklahoma's SEC debut against Tennessee last year, country music star Blake Shelton — an Oklahoma native who otherwise has no ties to the Sooners — served as the guest picker.
But now College GameDay is back in Norman for the second year in a row ahead of another big-time matchup and, as Young alluded to in his video, the first broadcast of the show in the post-Lee Corso era, as the longtime analyst bid farewell to the show with a grand exit last week ahead of his retirement. So, Oklahoma and Michigan now have the honor of being the first show since Corso's decision to retire.
The program will broadcast live from the South Oval on OU's campus from 8-11 a.m.
It will mark the 10th time Oklahoma has hosted College GameDay since the program's inception. The Sooners are 6-3 all-time when College GameDay broadcasts from Norman, with the three losses coming against Colorado in 1995, Notre Dame in 2012 and Tennessee last season.