ESPN’s College Gameday is an emmensly popular live college football pregame show broadcast nationwide. The show literally has built a true cult-like following. Two Saturdays ago, an Iowa State University student’s homemade sign, asking viewers to send him beer money, will result in a donation of over $1 million to an Iowa childrens’ hospital.
I’m a huge sports fan, and I have watched College Gameday since it started in 1987. My Saturday morning ritual, that started when I was 9 years old, continues to this day. I have fond way-back-when memories of watching the show before my friends and I hit the yards to play ball on Oak Park Drive. But in all those 32 years I have never seen something like like what started two Saturday’s ago.
College Gameday is live on-location at different college campuses each week. The show travels to the location of that week’s biggest college football matchup, and has a pregame show surrounded by students, fans, tailgaters, bands and mascots. Basically all the best parts of football on campus.
The show encourages fans to bring signs to hold up during the broadcast. The large crowds are full of unique signs every week. People surround the stages holding up their creations in the hope it will be shown on national television. One sign that started as a joke, asking viewers to send money for “Busch Light Needs Replenished,” has taken on a life of its own, and will end with a huge donation being made to University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital.
On September 14, College Gameday visited Iowa State University to highlight the Cyclones matchup against the Iowa Hawkeyes.
Carson King, a student at ISU and a die-hard Cyclones football fan, showed up for Gameday in Ames, Iowa at 5:30 a.m. He hoped to get a good spot where his sign requesting beer money would be shown on television, but he never could have imagined how it would turn out.
When he arrived, he realized that most of the best spots at the main stage were already filled, so he made his way over to one of the side stages and set up camp and held his sign high during the show.
King told the Iowa State Daily newspaper, “I thought it would just be a joke. I didn’t think anyone would actually see my sign and send money.” Boy was he wrong.
After only 30 minutes of holding his sign up he was surprised when he started getting donation notifications from his Venmo account. He had already received $600. “At that point I decided there was a lot more that could be done with the money,” he said.
After contacting his family he decided to donate the money he received, minus one case of Busch Light of course, to the children’s hospital located on the campus of ISU’s biggest rival the University of Iowa.
The childrens’ hospital is somewhat famous around college football as well. The hospital is located next to Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium, and during each Hawkeyes home game play is stopped so all players and fans can take a moment to wave to the young cancer patients watching from the hospital’s windows. It’s quite the touching scene. If you do an online search for “Iowa Wave,” you will see.
After posting his intentions to donate the money, his account had grown to over $67,000. Then things really took off when even more people decided to contribute. Busch Beer and Venmo even caught wind of his plans, and raised the stakes by pledging to match his donation.
As of Monday, as I finished this column, what started out as a request jokingly asking for beer money, has amazingly raised over $1 million dollars King will hand deliver to the hospital.
I’m in no way surprised by what transpired. This is the most generous populous in the world, and this goes to show that no matter what is going on there are people doing amazing things every day.
