Jason Sudeikis made his name as a bumbling American coach who arrived in England without the faintest grasp of soccer, but he’ll need no such crash course when College GameDay rolls into South Bend this weekend.
ESPN tabbed the Ted Lasso star on Thursday as the celebrity guest picker for Saturday’s show in South Bend, where Notre Dame welcomes top-ranked Miami in one of the season’s marquee matchups. And if you’re wondering what qualifies a Kansas City native to represent the Fighting Irish, Sudeikis cemented his bona fides during an appearance on The Pat McAfee Show, where he unspooled a Notre Dame lineage that begins with his mother’s family on Chicago’s South Side and includes, improbably, the man who played Norm on Cheers.
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“I mean, yeah, it’s big in my family,” Sudeikis said during Thursday’s appearance. “Growing up, my folks are from Chicago, my mom from the South Side. Her father, my grandfather, was a graduate from Notre Dame. I have another uncle, my uncle Jim. He’s a graduate from Notre Dame in 1975. My uncle George, the actor George Wendt, who played Norm on Cheers, he went to Notre Dame, dropped out after his junior year, because he skipped all his finals. So, you know, this is the way it all went down. And then I went to the basketball camp there in sixth grade.”
Sudeikis is the latest name in a 2026 procession of guest pickers that has alternated between Hollywood royalty, including Morgan Freeman at Ole Miss and Johnny Knoxville in Knoxville, and homegrown icons such as Caitlin Clark in Iowa City, and Steve Young in Provo. And his arrival could hardly be more opportune for ESPN, coming amid an open season on GameDay in which cable news hosts and columnists have lined up to bemoan how completely McAfee has come to overshadow a Saturday institution once regarded as untouchable.
Sudeikis knows something about stewarding a beloved institution himself as the star and co-creator of Ted Lasso. The character originated in 2013 as a gag in NBC’s promotional campaign for its Premier League coverage before blossoming into an Apple TV sensation about a coach whose relentless decency mattered far more than his unfamiliarity with the sport, and the long-awaited fourth season, which wrapped its run in October, sent Lasso back to Richmond to take charge of a second-division women’s team.
Richmond may be the team Sudeikis is known for, but the one he’ll pick on Saturday has had his family’s loyalty for three generations.
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